


Glitter & Gold

by Farasha



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Bittersweet Ending, Blood and Gore, Dubious Consent, Forced Prostitution, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, Past Character Death, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-28
Updated: 2018-02-28
Packaged: 2019-03-25 01:40:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 71,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13823775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Farasha/pseuds/Farasha
Summary: Victor Nikiforov is the Capitol's darling, the Living Legend who's survived the Games twice. He plays the role well, but mentoring District Ten's tributes year after year is beginning to wear on him in ways he could never have imagined as the terrified sixteen-year-old winner of the 66th Hunger Games.When Yuri Plisetsky volunteers as tribute, full of fire and fury and determined to win, Victor finds himself wanting to make sure Yuri doesn't die trying. Playing the Capitol's games win him no friends or favor, though, and Victor has to step carefully through a maze of political maneuvering to keep Yuri alive, which isn't easy when Yuri seems to loathe everything about him.A story of survival and finding companionship in even the darkest hours, Victor will have to overcome the terrible specter of his past if he wants to help Yuri survive his future.With art by Gen(mild spoilers)





	Glitter & Gold

**Author's Note:**

> This is a story of survival. There is no Mockingjay here, no revolution to end the Hunger Games. There will be no easy choices or uncomplicated endings. Named characters will definitely die. If angst isn't for you, turn back now. If you're afraid your fave will be killed, they honestly might.
> 
> Additional warnings about the sequel in the end notes.
> 
> Thank you immensely to my amazing, wonderful, patient, fantastic, and excellent betas: foxfireflamequeen and Aurum_Auri

District Ten looks the same now as it did all those years ago, when Victor first volunteered back when he was sixteen and stupid. Victor is staring out the window at low, barbed-wire fences keeping in a herd of bleating sheep as they come in, a boy and a girl like always. He doesn't want to look at them, but he has to. At minimum, one of them is going to die. Maybe both. Probably both—he's lost his tributes every year they've been given to him. He can tell by their eyes, now, he's seen so many pass through.

He looks into the girl's eyes and sees death already. Her name is Mila, and she'll turn nineteen before the Games start, right on the cusp of aging out. She almost made it, and Victor can see that she knows it. There's anger in her face, but it's mingled with something bleak and hollow; Victor is sure it's because of the boy. It's in the way she shifts, barely noticeable, trying to stand in front of the boy. She doesn't expect to survive this, but she wants him to live.

He looks into the boy's eyes and sees fury. He volunteered. Seeing him walk into the train car, Victor's memory flashes with the image of his face blown up large on the monitors at the reaping. The mulish set of his jaw is the same now as it was then. Victor has had volunteers before, and they've died the same as the ones who were selected. This one, though. This one's eyes are green like poison and cold like snow on the top of a mountain. This one might make it.

Victor isn't going to tell him so. They fight best when they think they're going to die.

"Yuri Plisetsky, is it?" Victor asks.

"You know it is," Yuri snaps, not taken by Victor's pleasant Capitol smile. Good. The faster he learns not to trust what's on the surface, the better.

"You're a very stupid boy," Victor tells him.

"What was I supposed to do, let my grandfather starve? At least if I win-"

"There's no winning," Victor interrupts. He stands, watching them both tilt their heads to look up at him. "Let's clear up that misconception right now. There's no winning the Games, there's only surviving." 

The only winner is the Capitol, he doesn't say, because even though he's their darling, the Living Legend who's survived twice, they still watch him and they still listen to what he tells his tributes, and Victor won't have this fierce boy's chance of surviving sabotaged from the word go.

"Victor!"

He takes his eyes off the tributes for only a moment, long enough to plaster a practiced, fake smile on his lips as Georgi waves his hands, a twisted, tragic look on his face.

"Victor, let them relax before you terrify them! Here, sit down, eat-"

Victor tunes him out. Georgi is wearing something ostentatiously purple today, with bits of black dagging hanging from the sleeves. His eyes are smudged so dark it looks like he has a skull fracture—bruising in the orbitals. Victor pushes the thought away; it's only Georgi's makeup. While the tributes are watching him, he doesn't need to be chasing old ghosts.

The girl— _Mila_ , Victor says to himself firmly; if she's determined to give her life for her companion, he needs to remember her name - Mila takes it slow with the rich Capitol food, eating in small bites. She's used to long starvation followed by a sudden glut, which means she must have been getting tesserae when things got desperate. She'd weighed the odds against her. Victor isn't going to ask her if she regrets that now, but he imagines she does.

Yuri, the boy, isn't so cautious. He digs into his food, the hollow in his cheeks filling like a chipmunk's. Victor considers telling him to slow down, but if his instincts are right about this one, Yuri will only push back. Better to let him find out on his own.

"Yura," Mila says. "Eat slower, you'll make yourself sick."

"Shut up, hag!" Yuri snaps, but he listens. Victor watches the back and forth between them and swallows. They know each other.

"Yura? What a delightful nickname!" Georgi clasps his hands to his chest and leans back in his chair like he's been struck with it. "Have you been friends for very long?"

Yuri turns a poison-green glare on him that makes Georgi's smile falter.

"I'm not telling you," he spits, venom laced all through his voice.

Georgi's face scrunches up, and Victor jumps up from his seat when the first of the tears start to come, Georgi pressing his hands over his eyes. 

"There, there, Georgi, you know how they are when they first get here. Why don't you go lie down? I know how you hate travelling by train." He loops his arm around Georgi's shoulders, patting his back and pulling him up from the table.

"It bounces, Victor!" Georgi sniffles at him. He lets Victor propel him into the other train car. Georgi is the worst kind of escort, too sensitive for the job and so dramatic when one of the tributes snaps back at him.

Still. The door closes behind Georgi and Victor turns back to his two tributes.

"You're going to have to do better than that at making the Capitol like you, if you want to survive." Victor slides into the seat Georgi left vacant, the plastic smile gone from his face.

"Why should I bother?" Yuri asks, stabbing a piece of beef so hard Victor is afraid he'll crack the plate. "They only care about watching us die."

"Sponsors are the difference between success and failure in the Games. If you want to be the last tribute standing, you'll need them, and that means making people like you. Or at least," he amended, catching Yuri's dubious and wary stare, "at least you have to make people interested in you."

"Nobody ever cares about the tributes from Ten," Yuri says, talking with his mouth full. Mila hasn't said anything at all, but her eyes are sharp on Victor. Maybe she's listening so she can repeat all of this back to Yuri later. Maybe he'll actually listen to her.

"You have to make them care. You're fierce, and that plays well, but you're going to have to stop insulting the Capitol." Victor reaches out and grabs a dish of warm bread out from under Yuri's hand. In a flash, Yuri has a knife in his palm, then embedded in the table. If Victor hadn't yanked his hand back, it would be impaled.

He swallows the annoyance, reminding himself that the whole world has been this boy's enemy and still is.

"Good, you're quick. Handy with a knife, too."

Yuri blinks at him, like that's the last thing he expected. Victor is busy admiring the cold, calculating look in his eyes when Mila finally speaks.

"Yuri can scrape a hide faster than anyone I know," she says. "He's quick with a butcher's blade, too."

"What about you?" Victor asks, even though he already knows she's given herself up as lost.

Mila shrugs. "I'm okay with a knife, but mostly I ride and lasso. I don't think there'll be much point of that in the Arena."

"You'd be surprised. Being handy with rope and knots can help." Victor has to talk to her before the interview. Even if she doesn't mean to survive, she shouldn't show it. It might hurt Yuri's chances if it looks like she's throwing the Games for him.

Georgi comes in then, his makeup repaired, back in bright spirits.

"Don't worry!" he says, although Victor can tell from Yuri's face that an apology is the last thing on his mind. "Victor is right, it's always worse on the first couple of days. Pretty soon we'll have both of you polished up with Capitol manners. Speaking of, Yuri, chew with your mouth closed."

Yuri smacks his food louder, glaring at Georgi, who sighs. Victor can tell the two of them are going to be like oil and vinegar, and imagines he'll have to keep the peace between them more often than not.

He always has his hands full with two tributes, but he's the only victor from Ten in recent memory, so he's all they've got. He watches them, slowly sipping Capitol wine that always tastes cloying on his tongue, not like the water-clear spirits that old Yakov used to brew in the back of his barn, the kind that tasted like paint varnish and smelled almost as bad. Victor hasn't seen Yakov for weeks, not since they pulled him from Victor's Village back to the Capitol to prepare for the Games.

He finds himself asking before he can stop. "Is Yakov still alive?"

Yuri snorts, not realizing how dangerous the question is or not caring. "As if anything could kill that old man. He's still as much of a pain in the ass as ever."

Victor cracks a smile, a real one. "Still running that ranch with an iron fist, is he?"

Mila is the one to chuckle this time. "You should have heard him when he came to say goodbye to Yuri. I'm not sure how you're not deaf from all that yelling." She says the last to Yuri, who scoots his chair back from the table and props his feet up on the surface, pointedly ignoring Georgi's glare.

"He can say what he wants." Yuri sounds cool and unconcerned, and Victor is filing it away for his interview. Arrogance isn't good, but confidence works. "I'm going to win this thing."

Victor catches his eyes when they flick to Mila, the pinch around his mouth, the way they go flat as his face goes blank. Mila reaches across the table and catches his toe, shaking his foot back and forth.

"Do it," she says, holding his eyes. "Show them Ten is something to be afraid of."

They don't talk about the Games for the rest of the evening. Victor sees his tributes off to bed at a decent hour and stays up to talk with Georgi for as long as he can stomach.

"It's exciting to get a pair of real contenders, isn't it?" Georgi asks. He has a tiny glass of sweet cognac in his hand. Victor sticks to juice.

"Plisetsky is the one we want to focus on," Victor says. He hates to write off a tribute, but when she's already done it to herself, he has to harden himself now. He can't get attached. Can't care about her. It'll only tear him up when she dies, and that might make it harder for him to help Yuri.

"Mila is a sweet girl! You can see she cares about Yuri and wants to help him," Georgi says.

"That's why she won't make it. She's going to make sure he lives. She doesn't want to win. She wants him to."

Georgi sits back, uncharacteristically serious, taking a tiny sip of cordial. "That could be dangerous."

"For both of them," Victor agrees. "We'll have to coach them very carefully."

"That they're friends isn't the worst thing to play up," Georgi says. "The audience likes alliances because they like seeing how they might end. We can let Mila show that she cares. We just need to make sure Yuri doesn't let slip that he does."

"No. He should keep that air he has. A little bit of arrogance, a lot of anger. He's the kind that appeals to the ones who like to back fighters and underdogs." He pauses for a moment to think. "We should steer him toward close quarters weapons. Knives. Maybe we can have him pick up a pair of those hand claws they sometimes leave out, get the idea of the vicious tiger from District Ten lodged in everyone's head."

"The tiger," Georgi says thoughtfully. "That might be something worth passing to Lilia."

"Lilia is going to do whatever she's inspired to do, you know that. She rarely takes anyone's input."

"She likes you, Victor. You're her greatest success after all."

The light fruit juice Victor is sipping tastes sour on his tongue. Of course. The Living Legend, the one who's won the Games twice. He shoves it all to the back of his mind.

"Enough strategy. We have a long day tomorrow, let's get some sleep."

Georgi, as shallow and slow on the uptake as he sometimes is, grabs Victor as they start to walk away and hugs him hard.

"We're going to do it this year," he says, completely unaware that even that encouragement makes Victor's stomach sink like a stone. Victory is going to be as hollow for Yuri as it was for him, but nothing Victor says is going to make Yuri believe it unless it happens.

Victor claps Georgi on the shoulder and retreats into his room. He stares at the ceiling for a long time before he finally falls asleep.

He dreams of the first time he went into the Arena. The Gamemakers had given them a long, brutal game of cat and mouse in a dense forest with trees so tall there were no low branches to catch and climb. Everyone had been stuck on the ground, navigating tree trunks as wide as houses to try and find each other.

It varies, what he dreams about. Tonight he dreams of the wildfire. They'd set it when the tributes were too spaced out to find each other, to flush them out and make it interesting. Victor remembers running, running so hard he thought his heart would burst, his lungs burning from exertion and smoke inhalation. He remembers plunging into the river running through the center of the Arena, their only source of water, feeling like he was being boiled alive as the wall of fire roared overhead. He remembers surfacing to see someone struggling for the river, their flesh burned black, their identity indistinguishable. Victor remembers watching them die, their last whistling breaths punctuated by the boom of the cannon.

His only thought as he wakes up gasping in a cold sweat is that at least he isn't dreaming of the Quarter Quell. He supposes those memories come enough to him when he's awake.

He can't go back to sleep. Instead, he dresses in one of his customary Capitol suits, drab in comparison with Georgi's wardrobe but still a thousand times more luxurious than anything he'd owned in Ten. The suit is slate grey with neat pinstripes, the cuffs ending precisely where they should, a thin stripe of aqua blue shirt peeking out from the hem. The blue of the shirt matches his eyes, and he picks a silver tie, to compliment his hair. He tucks a matching pocket square into the suit and smooths back his hair.

It's armor. When he's wearing their clothes it's easier to put on their smile, fake their enthusiasm as he talks about the odds that the children they've sent him will live. He wonders what they would do to him if he refused, since there aren't any other living victors from Ten and they need him. Then he remembers old Yakov, and remembers that they don't have to hurt him personally to keep him in line.

He wonders how quickly Yuri will figure out that his family is a liability here.

As if his thoughts of Yuri are good enough to summon him, he's there when Victor steps into the dining car where they had dinner the night before. Victor accepts a cup of tea from a silent Avox and blows on it before taking a sip. Too much sugar. Victor still prefers the sticky, lumpy preserves one of the old women in Ten used to make with what fruit she could find. It was always a hodgepodge of different flavors, confusing on the tongue. Victor misses it.

"What are you doing awake?" he asks Yuri, who is watching the scenery fly by out the window. His face is missing its usual scowl. He's pretty like this, blond hair falling around his face and brushing his chin. Victor swallows down the nausea that accompanies that thought. If Yuri wins, he'll have to contend with that.

"Like I could have slept," Yuri says.

Victor understands the sentiment, but can't approve. "You won't get another chance until after we pass you off to the stylists. You should sleep so you don't fall out of the chariot. That's not the kind of memorable impression we want."

Yuri's eyebrows have drawn down into that bratty scowl again. Victor catches himself thinking he'd like to slap it off Yuri's face and takes a long sip of tea, settling down opposite Yuri in the plush window seat.

"Why do I have to act like I want to be here? Everyone knows it's bullshit. Nobody wants to be here but the Careers. Or the Capitol, I guess, but they're—"

"Very different from what you know, sure, but you need to give them a chance. They might surprise you! I'm sure you have as many misconceptions about the Capitol as they do about you." Victor puts on a wide, fake smile. 

Yuri's face is turning a deep shade of furious red, and Victor can tell he's about to start yelling, so he leans across the window seat and puts his lips near Yuri's ear. 

"You never know who can be listening," he breathes. Yuri jerks away from him like he's been electrocuted, but his eyes are sharp on Victor's face.

"You're supposed to keep me alive, right?" he asks. There's something of a new respect in his face. Victor hopes this will be the last time they'll have to have this conversation.

"I'm your lifeline in the Games. I'm the one who gets you sponsors and, if you need it, presents that'll help you survive. If you really want to live through this, you need to do everything I say." Victor watches Yuri's face carefully. He isn't the first tribute Victor's had that hates the Capitol and has a problem with authority, but he might be the first one who's smart enough to push that aside to win.

Victor, despite himself, is starting to have hope. He wants to reach into his chest and rip it out. Hope is more dangerous than helplessness in the Games.

Yuri finally grunts at him, crossing his arms and leaning against the window. "I guess if anyone would know how to win, it's you."

Victor's smile nearly cracks. He can see Yuri's eyes sharpen when it wavers. He pushes the memory from his dream away and holds out his cup for more tea.

Luckily, that's when Mila and Georgi come in, and then breakfast is served, and all Victor has to listen to is Georgi berate Yuri for his manners while Yuri shoves enough eggs in his mouth to choke a good-sized pig.

"What happens when we get to the Capitol?" Mila asks. "We must be almost there."

"The train will pull in shortly," Victor agrees, looking at his watch. Ten isn't as far from the Capitol as some of the farther flung districts like Twelve. "I'll pass you off to your stylists. Mila might do alright, but you, Yuri..."

"What?" Yuri snaps, and gulps at his juice to wash down a sticky mouthful of pancake.

"You're going to despise it. But you need to do what they say, and not fight them. Your stylist has been doing this for years, and she's one of the best. People always remember the tributes from Ten, even if they don't win. She was my stylist, too. So listen to her and don't argue."

Yuri opens his mouth, but to Victor's surprise, the breath he takes turns into some ungraceful muttering before he stabs another piece of thick bacon.

"Mila, your stylist is newer, but I trust him. We're actually friends, if you can believe that about Capitol people. He'll do well by you."

"Thank you," she says, giving Victor a small smile. He gets the sense that she's not usually so quiet. He should try to figure out what she's really like so he can coach her for her interview. He makes a mental note before turning back to his breakfast.

"It'll be a few days before you have to actually talk to someone, but you will have to smile."

"Of course, you should want to smile!" Georgi says, the first time he's interrupted all breakfast. "You'll look like real people at last, and you'll be making your grand debut representing your district for all of Panem. It's such an honor! So I want to see big, big smiles from both of you! Come on, practice."

Mila easily wins at practicing smiling. She manages to make herself look pleased and gracious, though Victor can still see the ache behind her eyes. Yuri, on the other hand, looks like he's baring his teeth.

"Let it crinkle your eyes a little more," Victor says, from years of practice at faking smiles. "Squint a little if you have to. Don't grimace."

"Yura," Mila says softly, as it looks like Yuri is about to explode. "If you don't have sponsors, you won't win."

Tributes have won without sponsors before, but it is incredibly rare, and usually the Gamemakers themselves have it in for that kind of tribute, the ones that refuse to play the Capitol's game of personality. So Victor is grateful to Mila when Yuri takes a slow, deep breath and tries for a real smile.

It's close. His eyes and nose scrunch a little in a way that's almost endearing, and he looks less like he's trying to rip the audience's throat out with his teeth. He almost looks cute. It will be an interesting contrast to that arrogance.

"That's a lot better," Victor says.

"I don't have to keep it up when we're in the Training Center, do I?" Yuri asks, and Victor can see there's something more than just petulance behind the question.

"You should be thrilled to be—"

"No," Victor says, cutting Georgi off. It doesn't matter how many years they've been doing this together, Georgi will never come to understand why the tributes aren't happy, and Victor won't try to make him. "In the tower you can be yourself. Everywhere else, you'll need to remember that you're on camera." The windows of the train go briefly dark, and Victor checks his watch again as Yuri and Mila go running for the front of the train.

He takes his time catching up. He can hear Georgi saying, "Beautiful, isn't it?" and Mila's murmured response.

"Welcome to the Capitol," Victor says, his voice flat despite his best efforts. Yuri looks over his shoulder, surprised, and Victor raises his tea in an abbreviated toast. "May the odds be ever in your favor. Now wave for your audience, you never know who's watching."

Victor slaps on the million-dollar smile that won him so much love and attention in the Capitol and steps up behind his tributes, waving at the crowd as the train screams into the station. They always gather like this for the train from Ten, hoping to catch a glimpse of the Living Legend and his tributes.

Sure enough, the cameras are there as soon as they step off, reporters shouting questions at him and his tributes. They're kept behind a low fence to keep them from getting too close, but Victor, the same way he's done every year, steps up to the barrier with a winning smile to be pelted with questions while Georgi herds both of their stunned tributes into the Remake Center to be waxed and buffed and polished and dressed.

"Victor! Victor! Do you have anything to say about this year's tributes?"

"Are you excited to mentor a volunteer?"

"Can you tell us anything about your strategies?"

"Now, now," Victor says, winking for the cameras. It's the playboy look thousands of Capitol citizens sigh over, and he's counting on it to distract. "You know the drill! No information until after their interviews."

"Just a hint?"

"Come on, tease us!"

"Victor! A comment on your chances?"

Victor flashes his smile again. "Don't count District Ten out," he says.

He turns to walk away, pulling a sleek pair of sunglasses out of his inside jacket pocket and sliding them on in a practiced gesture that's pure class. He can hear the excited chatter of reporters behind him. He's given them something to buzz about, at least.

"Done with your adoring fans?" The amused voice comes from his left as he enters the Remake Center, and he turns to find Christophe there.

Victor hugs him, because Christophe is affectionate that way and because he needs a hug right now. Christophe squeezes him a little harder than usual. Victor rarely initiates touch, so Christophe knows there's something wrong right away.

"Is it Lilia's handful you're worried about? The volunteer?" Christophe links their arms together and leads Victor down the hall. It always smells too heavily of perfume and soap in here. Victor can feel the taste of it coating his tongue.

"He's a handful, alright. Angry." Victor lets Christophe lead him to the rooms where the prep teams are working on his tributes. They don't know it, but one of the walls is a one-way mirror, letting them see in without the tributes seeing out.

"Angry is an understatement," Christophe says dryly. "I'm glad I got the cooperative one. You know how poorly I handle a brat."

Victor's girl tribute last year had been the daughter of a rancher, used to relative privilege and being obeyed. She had alternated between crying and screaming at her prep team. Victor is glad he doesn't have to worry about that this year.

As expected, Mila is enduring the waxing and poking and prodding with a stone-faced look. She isn't enjoying it, but she isn't putting up a fuss. Yuri, on the other hand, is snarling at his prep team, only reluctantly letting himself be coaxed into warm water to be scrubbed and plucked and oiled down. One of his prep team dumps water over his head and Yuri hisses like an offended cat.

"He's like a wild animal," Christophe says.

"I think that's what I will use." The new voice comes from behind him, but Victor doesn't have to turn around to recognize it. Lilia Baranovskaya, a force of nature and a stylist for almost thirty years. She's helped a lot of tributes to victory even before she did it for Victor twice.

"What, dress him up like a wildcat?" Christophe gets a contemplative look. "That blond hair would take well to striped dye."

"District Ten, livestock. But we don't want anyone to look at our tributes and think they're cattle or sheep, would we?" Lilia watches Yuri grab one of his prep team by the wrist, eyes narrow as they inspect the pair of scissors the woman has in her hand. "This one has the instincts of a predator. The audience should know that."

"They still have cats in District Ten, don't they? The big ones. What are they called?" Christophe asks.

"Bobcats," Victor says. "They aren't that big."

"No, I think we'll need to be more impressive. Something mythical. Something that doesn't exist in Panem, or never did. Like something out of a legend." Lilia's eyes cut to Victor.

"Something worth being mentored by the Living Legend," Christophe says, catching Lilia's drift.

Victor hates that nickname. "Tigers were extinct a long time before the rebellion," he says, instead of arguing.

"Creatures of majesty," Lilia says, contemplation in her tone. "Deadly grace and beauty. Yes, that will do."

"What about mine? Should they match?" Christophe scratches at his beard. He's had implants done again in his hair. Real strands of gold intersperse his honey curls and the hair of his beard.

"Mila is going to support Yuri, though we'll keep that hush." Victor watches her submit to having her hair brushed through with glitter dust and her nails filed and buffed. 

"We should keep the animal theme, but not the same animal," Christophe says. "We'll distinguish them from each other. She should be something dangerous but loyal, something recognizable and familiar to contrast a tiger out of legend."

"Wolves," Lilia says. "There are wolves in the wilds, beyond the districts. They're pack animals."

"Done," Christophe says, with a bright clap of his hands. "Good work, Victor. You've got an eye for this. Maybe you can convince them to let you retire to being a stylist if your feral little volunteer wins."

Victor's feral little volunteer is gritting his teeth to keep from kicking as his toenails are filed. Victor doesn't blame him. He hates having that done himself.

"Georgi and I should get to the tower," he says, because he doesn't know if he can sit here and watch the prep team turn fierce Yuri into a spectacle to be stared at.

Georgi is unusually quiet as they take a brief cab ride to the Training Center. They have seats of honor on the platform behind the President, but they're permitted to eat before they gather for the parade of tributes. Victor picks at his food, letting Georgi fill the silence with awkward comments. 

They're getting ready to leave when Georgi finally breaks. "There must be something we can say to convince her to put some fight into it," he says.

"Why?" Victor asks. They're in the elevator on the way down. He heard once that it's harder to bug elevators because of electrical interference. He hopes so. "She's made her choice. The best thing we can do for her is respect it and make sure she doesn't give it away before she goes in."

"Talk to her, Victor! I saw those muscles as the prep team was working on her. She's strong, she could win it!" Georgi's distress is mounting, and if Victor doesn't do something soon, he'll cry and mess up his frosted blue eyeliner. Then they'll have to take the time to go fix it.

"Where does that leave Yuri, then?" he asks, trying to keep the harshness he feels out of his voice. "There's only one victor. Never two. Thinking there can be two is the way you destroy yourself. Let her go, Georgi. She's done."

Georgi's eyes fill, and Victor braces himself for the waterworks, but it seems like Georgi doesn't want to go back to fix his makeup any more than Victor does, because he steals Victor's pocket square to dab at his eyes before tucking it back in its place.

"I suppose you would know best," he says, with an exaggerated sniffle. "It just seems so cold."

Victor wonders, not for the first time, if people who grow up in the Capitol just aren't very intelligent.

There's a cocktail reception before the tributes are presented. Victor rubs shoulders with the Capitol elite, who are all too eager to fawn on him. He drinks slowly, eats slower, nibbling on appetizer delicacies to keep from getting full. Over the years, he's mastered the art of appearing to eat while not eating anything at all. It will be suspicious and rude if he doesn't. Every time he stops for a moment, a server appears at his elbow as if by magic.

"Purgative?" She offers her tray, smiling brightly. Tiny glasses of clear, syrupy liquid are balanced on it.

"Oh, no thank you," Victor says, nibbling on a cheese tart. He can't pretend he's never done it before, when there was no way out of it and he couldn't refuse, but he can never stomach it when he has tributes. He only has to remember Yuri's too-thin face. If his stomach aches for hours after this, it'll be a small price to pay.

"Nikiforov!"

The shout is too loud for acceptable manners. Several of the people close to him hide giggles behind their hands. Victor treats one of his hangers-on to an exasperated sigh and an eye-roll before he turns to the source with a big, fake smile.

"Oh, it's you!" Victor tries to sound surprised and manages a kind of false brightness he's hoping nobody picks up on. He has somehow forgotten that all the rest of the mentors will be here too.

"'It's you'? Wow, that's cold." It's the winner from the year before, the Career from District One. He has a small cadre of glittering women around him, and his fellow mentor in his lap. Theirs is a story of luck that can only happen in the wealthier districts. Isabella won two years ago, the year before the Quarter Quell. He volunteered, like everyone from District One did, and said he and Isabella would be married when he won the Games. Victor should know his name, but it's escaped him. He doesn't pay much attention to the tributes outside of his district.

"Ready to lose this year?" Victor asks, because the Careers only care about competition anyway.

"Lose! In your dreams. We've got a pair of great ones, and they'll be getting mentored JJ style!" He makes an obnoxious gesture with his fingers and follows it up with a wink. In his lap, Isabella laughs, her ostentatious engagement ring sparkling in the light from the chandeliers. The rest of JJ's hangers-on titter with her, colored wigs bobbing.

"Oh, I think mine will give you a run for your money," Victor says. He hates this—the betting, the way they talk about the tributes like they're interesting entertainment and not children doomed to a hideous death—but he can't escape the game. "You've only won once, after all, and mentoring is different than the Game."

"None of your tributes ever make the final six," Isabella says, with a smile that borders on cruel. Victor has a flash memory of her victory, garrotte biting into the neck of the girl from Five. The Capitol watches them kill and die every year and somehow manages to forget they're dangerous. Victor has never known a tribute to forget, no matter how many years have passed since their Games.

"This year will be different," Victor says, before remembering that he shouldn't be giving his tributes a disadvantage. Now JJ and Isabella will go tell theirs that the tributes from Ten are ones to keep an eye on.

"We'll see, won't we?" JJ says with a wink. "May the odds be ever in your favor!"

Victor murmurs it back, but his response is lost in the hiss-pop of the ballroom's speaker. He's saved by the parade, which is ready to get underway. A few event officials come around to collect glasses and plates from the mentors and shuffle them into line. Victor, about to step between districts Nine and Eleven, finds his elbow caught.

"No, no, you stand here," the event official says. He's neat in a silver tux, his hair and eyebrows dyed to match. His silver eyeliner is winged almost to his hairline. Copying their host, but in the most garish way possible. He leads Victor to the back of the line, behind Twelve.

"They're not doing this again, are they?" Victor asks, with a self-deprecating laugh. The official returns his laugh with genuine humor.

"Mr. Chulanont is a big fan of a grand entrance! Happy smiles, now!"

Victor pastes his on his face and doesn't let it waver, even as he catches dirty looks from up and down the line. To the Capitol, he's their prize. To the other victors, he's the worst kind of sell-out: the kind that loves it.

If he had friends among them, it might have been different, but he lets that thought slip away before his memory can take hold. He doesn't need that beating at his temples when a thousand cameras are about to be focused on his face.

As if his thoughts about friends summon him, Georgi practically falls into him, giving him a one-armed hug that crushes the delicate lace swan perched on his shoulder. Its head droops now, like it's been broken.

"Break a leg, Victor!" he enthuses. "Show them the Living Legend still has it, won't you? I'll just be here, watching from the screen."

The longing sigh he lets out suddenly makes Victor want to hurt him. He clenches his fists in his pockets where nobody can see.

"If I could swap with you, I would!" he says, his smile losing none of its charm. "I know what a fan of Phichit's work you are."

"He's so charming," Georgi sighs, and then shakes himself out of it to swan off to another part of the room.

The staff lead the mentors backstage, ready to enter. They buzz up and down the line like a swarm of silver bees, telling them, "Smile big! Wave bigger! You're the star!"

Victor knows that's not true. Nothing can hold the Capitol's attention for long, and right now they've come to see their annual bloodbath. The mentors will hold some attention, and Victor will hold more than most, but what the audience wants to see are the tributes.

Soon enough, he can hear music booming from the speakers. Phichit Chulanont always does like to make an entrance, and this year is no exception. The crowd goes wild as soon as his voice breaks out over the amplified speakers. Victor can't make out what he's saying; the acoustics are all designed to project the sound into the crowd and baffle it backstage.

A pair of cannons boom from either side of the stage and a shudder goes through the line. None of them, not even the Careers, will ever get used to that sound. From the cheering of the crowd, it was some kind of confetti cannon. Victor takes a long, deep breath through his nose and forces his shoulders to settle. Up front, JJ laughs loudly to cover up his own reaction.

Victor has to wait until last and hates it. The closer he gets to the gap in the curtain where he'll enter, the better he can hear. He listens to Phichit call District Seven's mentors, calling them spectacular, high-flying gymnasts. The highlights from their Games are playing right above their heads. Victor will have to keep his eyes on the crowd.

It isn't hard. After Phichit calls _Celestino Cialdini, the mountain from Twelve_ , the crew is affixing a microphone in his ear. It'll be the only way for him to make Phichit out among the acoustics and the crowd. They deftly hide the evidence of the mic and one of them seizes his arm in an iron grip. The feed to his ear switches on just in time.

"I know you think I forgot one," Phichit is saying, a little chuckle in his voice. "I'm sorry to pull this old trick again, but you know I can't resist! He won it once eleven years ago, and then he went and won it again in the Quarter Quell! Ladies and gentlemen of the Capitol, please give an incredible round of applause to the Living Legend, the man named to win, your multiple victor, Victor Nikiforov of District Ten!"

Victor bursts out of the curtain, waving and blowing kisses to the crowd. He keeps one hand pressed against the front of his suit jacket, keeping it from getting rumpled. There's a screen floating above the stage at center, faced toward him, and to his relief it's only a live feed of the stage. It helps him see that Phichit is trying to catch his hand, so he turns and clasps it smoothly.

For someone from the Capitol, Victor has always thought Phichit has exceptional taste. This year he's in shimmering red and gold, filigree creeping up the side of his suit to spill up his shoulders into a high, lacey collar that brushes his chin. His eyeliner is brilliant gold against his dark skin, and a floating, insubstantial gold sash finishes off the ensemble. He looks like a bright tongue of fire. 

"Will I ever get you to stop embarrassing me like this?" he asks. He doesn't realize his mic is live until his voice is broadcast over the crowd, but he saves it with a laugh, like he's being modest. The crowd laughs with him.

"Oh, go sit down! You're not the center of attention today," Phichit waves him off. Victor winks at the crowd, listening to their delighted screaming rise in pitch, and crosses to his seat between Seung-gil Lee of Nine and Aiglentine Rohaire of Eleven.

"Panem! Are you ready to meet your competitors in the Seventy-Seventh Hunger Games?" Phichit raises his hands to the crowd and the cannons boom again. Victor can see the showers of silver streamers and confetti this time, but his hands still clench white around the sides of his chair. On his right, Seung-gil is stone faced. On his left, Aiglentine gasps through her teeth, startled.

Victor looks up at the screen at the top of the stage as it begins to unfold into a much larger display. It's crucial that the mentors get to see the competition, after all, and now that the crowd is done staring at them, the real show is about to begin.

"Let's get to it!" Phichit cries, over the delirious cheering. Victor lets out a slow, shaky sigh, glad that all of their mics are dead for now. The lights over the stage dim, and all focus turns to the huge screens suspended in the air as the tributes' chariots roll out of the Remake Center.

Victor leans forward slightly, refraining from propping his elbows on his knees only because it would crease his suit. It's not only because it's his first look, and he needs to make it a good one for his tributes' sake. He'll never admit it to anyone else, but the parade is the only part of the Games that he can sometimes genuinely enjoy. There's artistry to it, and if Victor has come to appreciate anything about the citizens of the Capitol, it's their dedication to artistry.

District One's tributes are almost too decorated to look at. They flash with metallic embroidery and shimmer with gems, the billowing silk of their outfits streaming behind the chariot. The silk keeps getting in the way of the camera as it desperately tries to get a shot of their faces. The designs only get worse from there; Victor almost wonders if some of the stylists for the early districts aren't simply resting on their laurels. Aside from a couple, the tributes from One, Two, and Four have taken it for the last seven years. The tributes from Three are covered in lights, which is both unoriginal and will play badly until the sun goes down.

The first one to get his attention is the boy from Six. Victor only catches his last name, Ji, but he's interested in what the stylists have done with him. Tributes from Six usually end up in some kind of train conductor or pilot outfit, but this is different. This time, Ji and his fellow tribute _are_ the transportation. From their backs sprout huge, wing-shaped constructions, made from bits of pipe, wire, and clockwork. Around Ji's head is a circlet that arches back into more wings. Victor vaguely remembers an ancient god with that kind of circlet, a messenger and traveller. It's appropriate in a metaphorical sort of way. Victor is sure it's lost on the crowd, but he'll need to find the stylist for District Six and tell them he likes their work.

Phichit's commentary washes over Victor like background noise. He names the stylists, whose faces appear in a small inset on the screen as their tribute is in focus of the camera. He's good at making even ridiculous, uninspired choices sound like they have good design behind them. Victor is continually impressed at how diplomatic he is, but even he can hear a change in Phichit's voice as the tributes from Six roll out, and a corresponding drop in enthusiasm as the parade continues.

Seven's tributes are lumberjacks again, Eight's are barely wearing anything at all, and Nine's tributes look like they're wearing something like a hay bale crossed with a burlap sack. So far it's only Six that's interesting, and then come Yuri and Mila.

He sees his face as well as Lilia and Chris's faces on the screen. Only his is a live inset. None of the other mentors get this type of singular focus, but Victor plasters a slightly smug, certainly proud smile on his face as the chariot rolls out.

Mila he doesn't have to coach; she's a natural, hamming it up for the crowd with every proud toss of her head and flex of her bicep after she waves. Chris has draped her in russet fur, and it takes Victor a moment to realize she's a fox instead of a wolf. The fox in the henhouse? Cunning? He approves of the change, but wishes he would have known about it so he could school his face better on camera. Her hair is bound up with copper wire like a pair of oversized red ears, and as the camera swings around behind the chariot to catch the back of their outfits and their shoes, Victor is impressed at how well she's balancing on unforgiving heels. The front of the shoes come down into points like claws. She looks feral. Victor approves.

Yuri, to his credit, is smiling, but he lazily lifts his hand like he can't even be bothered to acknowledge the crowd, and the smile is cold and artificial. Victor thinks he can even save that, given how Lilia has styled him. Dark makeup is brushed over his skin in striking stripes, his hair done up like Mila's into a pair of rounded ears. A long, striped tail is fixed to his waist somewhere under the leather and furs, and black gloves with pointed claws on the ends of his fingers complete the look of something alien and untameable. The aloof, nearly haughty way he only deigns to wave at the crowd sometimes has to be Chris's doing, a little subtle coaching on attitude and how to carry off a believable performance. Yuri's face says he's here to win, and he wants everyone to know it.

The camera pans by both them in a closeup as Mila leans over and whispers something to Yuri. He elbows her and grins, matched by her smile, and Victor can see they both have caps on their teeth to lengthen the canines, and contacts to make their eyes brighter and their pupils cat-slitted.

The crowd reacts beautifully, cheering and chanting _Ten! Ten! Ten!_ Phichit picks up on the crowd's appreciation and feeds the hype with gushing commentary.

"An inspired design by Lilia Baranovskaya, the very woman who sent our Living Legend to victory in style. This is a departure from her usual work, which trends toward sophisticated lines and clean edges. Christophe Giacometti makes an equally head-turning contribution with genuine furs. These aren't the prey you find on the dinner table, folks, these are predators! Watch out, Panem, we may have a real hunt on our hands!"

Victor likes that. It's what he intends. He wants them both to be taken seriously, maybe Mila morseo than Yuri. If she's willing, he thinks he might even be able to use her age, her larger size, and her apparent strength as a decoy. Let everyone think she's the contender, and Yuri has a knife in their back before they realize what he's doing.

If she's going to give her life for him, she might as well make it worthwhile.

Eleven comes out next, and Victor's heart sinks. On his left, he hears Aiglentine give a soft, satisfied laugh.

The tributes from Eleven are identical, and it's apparent as soon as their names appear in the caption that it isn't only the styling. They're holding hands and mirroring each other's movements, looking like a single unit in their chariot. It almost doesn't matter what they're wearing, but their stylists have dressed them in vines and twists of white fabric made dark with wine stains. Victor knows they're wine only because he knows what blood actually looks like; to the Capitol, it's an echo of the violence to come.

"A fascinating story, these tributes—be sure to tune in to the post-parade show to see footage of District Eleven's reaping and the moving moment when Michele volunteered to go with his twin sister to the Games. Impeccable styling as always by—"

Victor tunes Phichit out. Rival tributes having a humanizing story is bad. Tragic family members doomed to lose each other is worse. The Capitol loves that kind of thing.

He'll need to work hard to make sure it's Mila and Yuri getting the attention of the sponsors, not these Crispino twins from Eleven. He can still see Yuri's face, green eyes made cold and calculating by the contacts. He takes it back. This is the wrong impression to give. Victor needs to make sure the Capitol sees _Yuri_ , in all his fury.

He almost doesn't see the chariot from Twelve. The boy tribute's hair might hurt him in the Arena—they've dyed it canary yellow and fire red, probably to represent fire from the coal district. Other than the hair, he and his fellow tribute are in black from neck to ankle, with high, lace-up boots that make them a couple inches taller. They're both slight, though none of the tributes are as small and slender as Yuri.

The stand-outs are Six, Ten, and Eleven. Victor was hoping Ten would take the parade by storm, but he didn't count on Six's stylist pulling out all the stops, or on Eleven being a tearjerker. He has to do more than swan around with a big smile to secure support at this stage.

The chariots line up in front of the stage. The massive screen hanging in the sky moves to make way for the newest arrival onstage. Victor's skin prickles from his scalp to his toes.

Victor has fought for his life in the Games twice, and nothing he encountered there has ever scared him as much as President Snow. He's not alone; Victor senses fear from the stage around him like a poisonous mist as the president takes the podium. Phichit yields the microphone with a sunny smile, but even he seems to retreat quickly away.

"Welcome, tributes, to the Capitol."

The crowd surges with cheers after the president's opening line. He raises his hands, waving, an affable smile creasing his face that makes him look colder to Victor's eyes. He can only see the back of the president's head from where he sits on stage, but of course the screen is broadcasting the speech. It always does.

Victor struggles to listen. President Snow is fonder of him than he is of many of the tributes, though recently his District One darlings have been usurping that post. Still, he never knows when the president will ask what Victor made of his speech. Best to have an answer ready.

Next, the history of the Hunger Games plays as the sun sets and the stage darkens around them. There is light, still, but it's more private than it was. Victor's fingers ache where he's been clenching his hands together. While the history reel is playing, the camera sweeps over the tributes. Mila has Yuri's wrist in a firm grasp, pinned to the chariot, and both their eyes are fixed raptly on the screen. Mila understands what's at stake. Victor hopes Yuri is figuring it out, too. He feels like he's been on a rollercoaster, his confidence in their appeal and their chances swinging like a pendulum.

It's been years since he's had to employ real strategy in playing the Games.

As soon as he thinks it, he hates himself. The Capitol has been too good at convincing him to shed his skin and adapt. He's starting to think like them.

He doesn't get to see the tributes again as they finally release them from the stage, the live feed cutting out. Victor won't have an interview about Yuri until after Yuri's own interview, though the press will hound him for quotes. When the stage crew comes to take his mic and his earpiece, and he can finally get up from the chair, he tries to avoid the rest of the mentors and make his escape. He has a reception to return to, after all.

"Not a bad play."

Victor glances at the person who caught up to him. Emil Nekola seems relentlessly cheerful, but his face is pinched around the eyes.

"You too." Victor tugs at the cuffs of his suit jacket for lack of something better to do, following the silver-clad events staff through the backstage area to the reception hall. Emil keeps pace with him. Victor looks around for Aiglentine, his partner, but can't find her.

"They're friends, aren't they? Yours for this year. They caught my eye." Emil's hands are in the pockets of his suit, more ostentatious than Victor's. He has searingly bright blue lighting fed through the seams, outlining him in a soft, artificial glow.

"Yours are twins. That's going to be interesting to manage."

Emil's laugh doesn't sound quite as friendly and bright as it might have if they weren't in the middle of it. Victor hates this time of year.

"I guess we'll have to find out," he says, as they emerge among the citizens of the Capitol, who promptly burst into applause.

Victor waves graciously and sees Emil doing the same out of the corner of his eye. They separate immediately. Victor turns the conversation over in his mind, wondering what Emil was after. Most of the other mentors hate him for everything that happened in the Quarter Quell. He's the reason why half of them are here instead of in Victor's Village back in their home districts, watching this all on a screen from hundreds of miles away.

"Victor!" he hears, right before Georgi crashes into him, wrapping both his arms around Victor's shoulders and squeezing hard. "They were wonderful! So fierce I was almost afraid of them myself! We already have some interest."

Victor hooks his arm around Georgi's shoulders and hauls him close. "Not so loud. It's going to be a different kind of playing field this year than we're used to." 

Georgi gave him a quick, firm nod, his stiffly gelled hair bumping Victor's cheek. "There's a studio interested in contributing to one or both of our tributes. I think you know the executive—look there, he's the one with the absolutely gorgeous eyelashes. I have to ask where he got them done."

Victor looks where Georgi is subtly pointing. He sees the lashes Georgi is talking about almost before he recognizes the man, but when he does, he feels doused in a bucket of ice. He has to take a long breath to steady his first reaction, one where he shoves Georgi away and escapes the reception entirely, crawling back to the tower where Yuri and Mila will be getting out of there parade wear and finding their way into bed. Victor should be there, not here. He doesn't have much time to make sure they're ready.

But that's by design; they don't want him bonding or spending too much time with his tributes, and if he tries to rock that boat he won't come out the other side unscathed. Neither will Mila or Yuri. He has to remember that he's trying to save a life, and this will go a lot easier.

The first time Victor met Gaius Fairbrand, he was sixteen and had just won the Games. Then, Gaius was still roguishly handsome, an expert at making the ostentatious Capitol fashion look tasteful on his frame. Victor almost hadn't minded being essentially sold to him like an expensive escort, at least not then. Now, he's pushing fifty and has gained weight around his middle. He hasn't learned to adjust his fashion choices to his age and changing body, and the bright yellow waistcoat that would have looked fashionable on a twenty-something up-and-coming looks ridiculous on a greying old film executive. The false eyelashes, too, are something that would better suit a much younger man. They stand out easily a few inches from Gaius's eyes, glittering in the lights.

Gaius smiles broadly when Victor approaches, passing him a glass of wine from a nearby tray. Victor takes it and sips without protest, even though he didn't want to get drunk this evening. Then again, that was before he knew he'd be playing arm candy for Gaius all night. He drinks the wine too quickly and picks up another glass, determined to take this one slower.

"Victor!" Gaius is loud, which means he's also been drinking. Maybe Victor will get lucky and all he'll want is Victor's company. "It's always good to see you back in the Capitol. It's unimaginable that they make you go back to that backwater in between the Games. If I could put a bug in the president's ear, I'd tell him to let you move here year-round."

 _I'll bet you would_ , Victor thinks, but he allows himself to laugh at Gaius disparaging his home district.

"I would be afraid of becoming less appreciative if I got to be here all the time," he says, barely touching the wine to his lips.

"Always humble! You should learn how to revel in your spoils. The Leroy kid is quite good at it." 

For a moment, Victor feels a shiver crawl down his spine. He doesn't like JJ, but he doesn't wish Gaius on him, either. JJ isn't Gaius's type, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything, and it won't matter that he's married, either. When Gaius laughs it off like it's a big joke, he relaxes.

"Leroy has a big head," Victor murmurs. "His tributes this year were fairly forgettable."

"Oh, and here come the claws," Gaius says, an approving note in his voice. "I was wondering if you had anything of a predator in you as well, after the way your tributes were styled. It's a bold choice to be so blatant about their barbarism."

"They both have lovely manners, actually," Victor says. "You know the parade is about making an impression."

"Well, they surely did that. The young man especially—what was his name again?"

Victor's mouth is dry. He can't gain Gaius's support for Yuri without talking about Yuri, but the last thing he wants is for Gaius to get interested in Yuri. Still. He can't play the game too close to the vest or Gaius will suspect something.

"Yuri Plisetsky. He volunteered."

"Did he now?" Gaius asks. "Ten hasn't had a volunteer in a long time, not since you. Any idea why?"

"He's supporting his grandfather. He wants to win and improve their lives." It's a rote answer that doesn't tell Gaius anything at all about Yuri, really. Still, Gaius and the other Capitol citizens listening all nod with serious expressions.

"Well, of course he does," one of the women says. "Who wouldn't?"

"Of course," someone else agrees. Victor takes a bigger sip of his wine and reminds himself to keep smiling.

"Do you think he's a contender?" Gaius asks, because that's the real question here.

"Yuri has drive and fire," Victor says. "He's motivated and he wants to win. He knows the stakes. He's small, but that means he'll be harder to catch. And he'll fool you; he looks delicate but he's far from it." _I think he's more dangerous than I ever was_ , Victor doesn't add, because while Yuri is dangerous, he doesn't want that word to become associated with him.

"What about the girl, what was her name?" This from a much younger woman than Gaius, likely one of his new starlets. She looks the same age as Victor himself. "I absolutely adored the way Giacometti did her hair. So unique!"

"Mila," Victor says. "She's strong, and she's right on the edge of aging out. I think she's the oldest one in this year's Games."

"But you think Yuri is the better shot," Gaius says.

"Gaius," Victor says, letting his eyes slide half-closed and peeking up at him through the lashes. "You're asking me to favor one over the other. You know that's against the rules."

"You coy thing," Gaius says, smirking at him. "I know you, Victor. You're good at breaking rules."

 _Only when they don't matter_. Out loud, he says, "Sorry. Rule-breaking is one thing, cheating is something else. I'd _never_ cheat." He pauses for effect and then winks at his audience. "At least, not where I could get caught."

The small crowd gathered around them titters. Gaius catches and holds his eyes. Victor knows he understands the invitation that's been extended. Now all that matters is whether he's going to take Victor up on it.

Victor knows how to play powerful men, though, so he promptly excuses himself from the group and wanders off to speak with someone else. He can feel Gaius's eyes on him as he walks away and puts a little more sway in his hips. If he hasn't caught the man already, that will do it. He always did love staring at Victor's ass.

He spends the rest of the reception feeling out the room for anyone else who might be interested and getting progressively more drunk. Georgi wrinkles his nose at Victor when he comes to say goodbye.

"You're a mess," he says, a rare criticism.

"Oh, don't start playing mom. I'm having fun, you're always after me to do that." Victor drains his wine and sets the empty glass aside.

Georgi looks skeptical. "I'm sure you're having a wonderful time." If Victor didn't know better, he'd think Georgi is being sarcastic.

"I am! But I'll be along in a little while. Go make sure our tributes actually made it into their beds." Victor picks up another glass of wine and ignores Georgi's reproving look.

"They'll be going to the training center first thing in the morning," Georgi reminds him. "You'll need to be able to talk to them before that."

"I know, I know." Victor waves him off. "How many years have I been doing this, Georgi?"

"Too many, I think," Georgi says, though he says it quietly as he's taking Victor's wine glass out of his hand. "Keep a clear head and don't give anything important away."

"Georgi. Darling. When have you ever known me to give something important away?"

Georgi looks at him like he's seeing Victor for the first time in a long time. Victor takes a long breath. He's losing it. Georgi is actually right for once. He wonders if it's knowing that Gaius is lurking in the crowd, or if it's finally all hitting him; Yuri, Mila, the things that are outside of his control, they're eating at him this year worse than usual.

It's the dread he feels about the Games. He hasn't felt this way since the Quell, when he'd gone back into the Arena. 

He can't start remembering it now, though. Victor tugs the lapels of his jacket until it lies straight, smooths a hand through his hair, and winks.

"I'll be fine. Get some sleep, we have a long day tomorrow." Victor grabs Georgi by the shoulders and kisses him on both cheeks, then pats him on the shoulder. "Your makeup is wonderful today."

"Do you think?" Georgi asks, derailed at last. "This blue highlight that's in style this year compliments my cheekbones so well. Goodnight, Victor!"

Victor smiles at his back, and makes sure he sees Georgi round the corner before he picks up another glass of wine.

He stays too late because Gaius stays too late. Victor gradually steels himself and drifts back to Gaius's side, enduring a hand on the small of his back and making light conversation. Most of the other mentors and escorts have left. JJ and Isabella are still there, holding court on one side of the room. JJ has gotten even more drunk than Victor, who can feel the room tilting around the edges. He's lying on the couch with his head in Isabella's lap, loudly recounting how he fell in love with her for, Victor is fairly sure, the sixth time of the evening. Isabella pets his hair gently and endures the embarrassment with a fond smile.

The pit of Victor's stomach hurts like he's been stabbed. He swallows hard and puts the wine down on the tray. Gaius frowns at him as he steps away from the arm at his back.

"I'll be right back," Victor says, flashing an assured smile. He retreats into what remains of the crowd and makes for the restroom. He's upright and walking in a mostly straight line, but only because he has a goal and his feet are carrying him. He's too drunk. Georgi was right again.

Maybe he'll start listening to Georgi more often.

Victor sags against the wall as he finally makes it through the door into the restroom. With the first goal achieved, it feels like a mile from the door to the sink. He stares at the mirror, blinking at the face he sees there. Blue eyes, silver hair, flawless skin. He sees himself as if he's smiling vapidly down from a screen. His stomach rolls, and he barely makes it to the toilet in time before the foul taste of wine comes back up to coat his tongue.

It's been a long time since he's done this. Not since he was a teenager, still too small to hold his liquor. He knows Capitol wine, knows it's nothing like Yakov's old still but that it's not water, either. Everything is different this year, and different is dangerous. Victor needs to disconnect.

He flushes the toilet and washes his mouth out in the sink. His makeup is smeared, but the bathrooms have wipes, so he carefully doctors the smudges until they seem artfully disheveled. His eyes are red from dry heaving, but no longer teary. He can face them and laugh off the fact that he got too drunk. It isn't like they don't make themselves do this with the purgative all the time.

That thought almost sends him back to the toilet, so Victor thrusts it away and walks out of the bathroom with his head up.

Gaius is waiting for him.

"Are you alright?" he asks, laying a solicitous arm on Victor's shoulder.

"Oh, too much wine. Did they change the vintage? It doesn't usually go to my head like this." Victor leans into Gaius's hand. If they're going to do this, they might as well do it so Victor can go to bed.

"They might have," Gaius says, taking Victor's hand and tucking it into the crook of his arm. He leads Victor away from what's left of the reception casually, like they're only going for a stroll. Victor has to admire how brazen he is. With press everywhere, news that Victor Nikiforov left on the arm of famous film exec Gaius Fairbrand could be the kind of thing that headlined. Or at least, it would be, if the news wasn't entirely focused on the tributes. The press would be distracted for weeks.

Victor lets Gaius pull him closer, slowly extracting his arm from Victor's only to drape it over Victor's shoulders as they walk. Victor is tall for someone who grew up outside the Capitol, but Gaius has a few inches on him still. He likes using them. Victor lets him.

He's not surprised that they don't make it out of the building. Gaius always was impatient, and it seems that still hasn't settled with age. He walks down the hall testing door handles until one gives under his hand. He opens the door, pushes Victor through, and shuts it after them.

They're in some kind of storage closet. Racks hold neat boxes stacked on top of each other, every available inch of space taken. Victor can't find it in him to be curious, because Gaius pushes him against one of the shelves and kisses him.

Gaius isn't terrible at kissing. He's forceful, but not bruising. He respects that Victor will have to be on camera for the next several weeks. His lips aren't particularly soft, but he has finesse. Victor has never minded this part, where Gaius's hands roam over the fabric of his suit, stroking down the line of his spine, palming his ass, pushing up under the jacket. He keeps kissing Victor while he does it, barely touching his tongue to the swell of Victor's lip. Victor can't help his reaction; a shiver under Gaius's hands, a gasp into Gaius's mouth.

"You beautiful thing," Gaius says against his lips. His eyelashes are long enough to sweep against Victor's cheek, a strange, feathered caress. Victor pulls away from him enough to look up into Gaius's face. "I love those eyes looking up at me."

His roving hands pull free of Victors jacket and instead slide up the sides of Victor's neck to cradle his skull. Victor breaks out in goosebumps, a little flash of warning curling up his nerves. Gaius is a Capitol citizen; he isn't exactly soft, but he isn't a killer. Still, the way he has his fingers laced through Victor's hair, palms cupping the sides of his neck, his thumbs brushing against Victor's earlobes, he could do it.

Instead, he pushes down, and Victor goes with the pressure. His knees fold. At least he knows what Gaius wants. This is easy. This is better than a lot of things Gaius could have wanted.

He keeps his hands to himself, knowing that Gaius prefers to be the one to unbuckle his belt. The canary yellow waistcoat looks even more ridiculous in the dark. Victor bites the side of his tongue to keep from laughing at the picture Gaius makes, his pants unzipped and his cock hanging out under that fashion monstrosity. Victor swallows down the hysterical laughter lurking behind his teeth. With the night he's had, once he starts he might not be able to stop.

Instead, he focuses on Gaius's hand moving over his dick and gets down to what he needs to do. Gaius tastes like perfumed soap. Victor licks him wet and then sucks him down, opening his eyes to look up like Gaius likes.

Gaius has to fuck his mouth shallowly to look him in the eye. The paunch he's sporting isn't fashionable; Victor wonders whether he gets away with it because he is who he is or because he can't be bothered to care about opinion. Eventually, Gaius gets tired of the shallow thrusts, closes his eyes, and pushes deep into Victor's throat.

Victor can't help but gag; it's been some time since he's had to do this, and Gaius is rough about it. The tears he cleaned up in the bathroom are back, squeezed out of his eyes by the cock ramming into his mouth. Gaius hasn't let go of his head, fingers knotted in his hair and pulling roughly. Victor's fingers clench in the fabric of his pants. After he spent all night so careful not to wrinkle his suit.

The only good part about this is what it'll win him. It's not even good luck that Gaius doesn't last long, because he yanks Victor off by the hair and jerks himself until he comes all over Victor's face. Gaius is breathing hard, and as Victor slowly wipes enough come off his face to blink his eyes open, he's staring down like he's won something.

 _You've never watched someone die. You've never held someone in your arms and felt the life bleed out of them_ , Victor thinks, staring up at Gaius with a look he knows unnerves the citizens of the Capitol. They laugh nervously whenever it crosses his face.

Gaius pats him in the cheek, regardless of how sticky it is.

"Now will you tell me which one of your tributes you'd like me to back?" he asks. He pulls a slim case out of his jacket pocket that turns out to be wet wipes. It's so practical—and at the same time so _Gaius_ , who can't keep his cock in his pants for five minutes—that Victor laughs before he can contain it.

"Gaius, always so prepared." Victor stands shakily from the closet floor and waits for Gaius to wipe his hands and extend the case. He cleans his face, taking off his makeup as well. He takes a long breath. Once he does this, there's no going back, and no changing the strategy. Maybe he should talk to Mila before he makes this play, but he's good at reading people. He knows what he sees in her face. 

"Yuri Plisetsky is my pick to win. He's got the motivation, he's got a fighting spirit, and he's smart. He's going to outwit and outmaneuver the others." Victor crumples the wet wipe and stuffs it in the pocket of his pants. "Mila is going to protect him."

"Oh, that should be interesting to watch," Gaius says. "Alliances are fascinating, don't you think? The best part is when they all go to pieces. They make for fantastic movie plots. Mm, I suppose I'll have to start looking for actors for the film of the 77th."

Victor's ears ring. Breath feels like fire in his lungs. He's lucky he has his hands in his pockets. They're clenched into tight fists, his manicured fingernails puncturing the skin of his palms. 

"You've given me quite an edge on the competition, Victor, thank you. I'll be sure to support your Yuri," Gaius says.

 _Your Yuri_ falls into Victor's ears. He presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth and clenches his teeth until they creak. Memory tries to flicker at the back of his mind. He can't. He pushes it down.

Gaius is oblivious to Victor trying to strangle back the urge to kill him right where he stands. He slips his fingers under Victor's chin and tilts his face up. Victor forces his expression into impassivity as Gaius pulls their mouths together, kissing him with all that finesse that Victor hadn't _minded so much_ a minute ago.

Gaius leaves without another word, letting the door to the closet swing shut after him. Victor stands trembling, his hands shaking, sweat broken out on the back of his neck. He feels sicker now than when he threw up the wine earlier, but there's nothing left in his stomach. He has to go back to the tower. His tributes will need him in the morning.

Yuri will need him in the morning.

He neatens the line of his suit as much as he can in the dark with no mirror. He brushes his fingers through his hair, trying to set it right. He'll look disheveled. If he's lucky, Gaius led them far enough away from the party that none of the press is standing outside.

He's not as lucky as he hopes, but he at least gets his wish about the press. Victor steps out of the closet and lets the door click shut quietly behind him. He looks up and down the hallway, orienting himself in the building. He's about to start walking when someone clears their throat behind him.

He turns to see Celestino Cialdini from Twelve walk out of a nearby doorway. Victor almost laughs again. After the night he's had, he's not sure why he expected anything different. 

"Are you alright?" Celestino steps closer, taking in Victor's rumpled suit. Celestino has every right to hate him, but the worst part about the man is that he doesn't hate Victor. He acts like he cares.

"Just fine," Victor says, smiling. "Just Gaius, you know. He can never wait to get somewhere private."

Celestino doesn't reach out and touch him, like some of the Capitol people do when they're trying to be comforting. They've both been in the Arena, they know the kind of walls that go up and stay there. Instead, he checks Victor over again, looking to see if he's hurt.

"I really am fine," Victor insists. He's searching for something else to say and, as happens rarely, his mouth betrays him by speaking before he thinks. "The stylists are going to get your tribute killed."

Celestino actually laughs, startled, but it's without humor. "I'll tell him to rub mud in his hair. I didn't like the choice, but my input wasn't welcome."

"Ouch."

"I'm sure you're grateful for the team you have." Celestino pauses. "Yuri, huh?"

It's like a bucket of ice water. The rest of the drunk haze that has been cushioning Victor all night evaporates. He feels his mouth stretch into his fake camera smile as soon as his heart seems to wring itself out in his chest.

"You know me. The universe laughs at me." Victor forces himself to take a breath. "How is Minako?"

"You can ask her yourself," Celestino says. He's frowning. "You're not alright."

"I am alright." It's a useless protest and they both know it. Victor is cracking at the edges. "Goodnight. I'll see you on the press cycle."

"Get yourself together," Celestino advises as he walks away. "They're going to ask you things-"

"How long have I been doing this?" Victor asks, spinning to face Celestino, walking backward down the hall.

"Not as long as I have. Go to bed, Victor."

Victor turns back around. The only thing he can think of to say is petulant, and he doesn't want to pick a fight with Celestino, but the repressed fountain of anger inside him is going to bubble over at someone. He imagines coming across Gaius in the hall. He would come up behind him and grab him by the back of the neck, slam his head into the wall until his skull fractures. Then he would walk away like nothing happened.

He has himself mostly back on the leash by the time he's riding the elevator up to the tenth floor. He can see his reflection in the polished glass. He's still a mess, despite everything he did to pull himself together before. His hair is sticking up oddly in the back, the knees of his suit are scuffed, the fabric around his thighs is wrinkled. His tie is pulled askew. He wonders when that happened as he absently fixes it.

The doors to the elevator slide open to the darkness of their floor. Victor sighs and takes his shoes off to keep them from clicking on the polished surface. He hasn't gotten a chance to look at the layout of the room this year and trips over a chair, swearing softly.

"Victor?"

"What are you doing awake?" Victor asks, turning toward the voice. Yuri is silhouetted against the window, staring out over the late-night shimmer of the Capitol. The light from the window is enough to make Victor's face visible. He wants to retreat into the shadows, but he has to seem like he knows what he's doing.

Not that he seems like it right now.

"Where have you been? Georgi came back hours ago. Are you drunk?" Yuri demands, standing from his perch in the window seat. He's dressed in soft pajamas that fit his small frame perfectly. He looks like he tried to go to sleep and couldn't, then came out here to stare at the lights of the city. Victor has done the same thing so many times. He can't find the words to answer.

"You should sleep. You have to be at the training center tomorrow." Victor turns to retreat into his bedroom.

Yuri lunges across the room and catches Victor by the arm. Victor moves before he can check himself, stepping to the outside of Yuri's body and into the grip, pinning Yuri's elbow under his hand. He pulls his strike as his brain catches up with his body, his palm impacting Yuri's chest with enough force to expel his breath but not enough to hurt. He shakes himself free of Yuri and staggers back, stumbling over the same chair, this time falling into it. Yuri is off-balance for only a moment. Then he's back in Victor's space, hands propped on the arms of the chair, his mouth pinched like he smells something foul. He raises his fist and Victor's hands fly up to catch both wrists, pinning Yuri's hands back down to the chair.

"I have to be on camera and so do you." Victor squeezes Yuri's wrists hard enough to hurt. "They had a reception. I drank. I got you a sponsor. Go to sleep so you don't embarrass yourself in the morning."

Yuri wrenches free of him and steps back. All the fury Victor feels is reflected in Yuri's face.

"I'll bet you did," he says, his voice low. "You're disgusting. I can win without you."

"You can't," Victor says. "They won't let you get rid of me, and you really can't."

"Yes I—"

"What are you going to do about Mila?" Victor asks, interrupting before Yuri can make this into some kind of childish back and forth. "There's only one winner. There are no allies in the Games."

Yuri goes pale, his mouth open. His words have died in his throat. He stares at Victor like he's some kind of spectral horror, a loathsome thing emerging from the dark recesses of the world. He chokes on a word Victor can't even make out through the way he's trembling and runs out of the room. The victory feels hollow. That's not new. They always do.

Victor makes it to his room without any further incident. He sheds his tie, his suit, his shirt, and collapses into the bed in only his underwear. It takes him a while to convince himself to wiggle underneath the covers. He's exhausted. He stares into the dark blankly until he finally drifts into sleep.

The morning makes two things immediately clear: Victor can't drink that much for the rest of the Games if he wants to be useful, and Yuri despises him.

When Victor comes into the room, Yuri spears him with a poisonous green glare. They're already halfway through breakfast, having demolished a small stack of pancakes, a full container of sweet Capitol jelly, and several other things that have left behind only greasy plates as evidence of their presence. Victor sits between Georgi and Mila, so he won't have to risk bodily harm from Yuri.

"Both of you go to the training center today," Victor says, serving himself briskly. There's no point in trying to be friends if Yuri is going to look at him like that. "You'll want to focus on the important things. Survival skills, edible plants, how to start a fire—"

"I know how to start a fire," Yuri snarls. He shoves a syrupy bite of pancake into his mouth.

"So go look at things you don't know how to do. Stay away from knives. Mila, try not to show them your full strength. You want to hold some things back for when you go in front of the Gamemakers. They score better if what they're seeing is a surprise. Ten is one of the later districts, so they can get bored before you come out. It'll be your job to wake them up. In the meantime, be unobtrusive. Don't make friends. Don't make enemies. Keep to yourselves for these first couple days. Once the scores come out, we'll see who we need to be wary of."

"We should show them we're something to be wary of," Yuri grumbles.

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Georgi says.

"No, you don't." Victor redirects the conversation back to important things before Yuri can wind Georgi up again. "If the other tributes see that you're a threat, you'll be on the top of their list. Fear is a good thing in the Arena. Fear tells you who to watch, when to run, when you have to fight or die. You don't want them to be afraid of you before you go in. You want them to forget you exist."

"Like we could do that, with the way the crowd was chanting yesterday!" Yuri stabs his plate even more violently.

"Don't do that, you'll crack the flatware!" Georgi is aghast, reaching to grab the fork from Yuri's hand. Yuri looks like he's considering how much trouble he'll get in if he stabs Georgi with it.

"The parade is for the Capitol. What they think doesn't matter to your fellow tributes any more than it does to you right now. The spectacle won't make an impression on them. What you do in the training center will."

Mila has been silently eating the whole time. When she's done, she sets her fork down with a decisive click. "You can either train us together or separately, right?"

"That's right," Victor says, and he suspects he knows what's coming.

"I want to be trained separately," she says, confirming his suspicions. Yuri's head jerks up to stare at her. Victor can read his own question from the night before written all over Yuri's face. _What will you do about Mila_?

"All right. Go ahead and get dressed in your training clothes. We don't want to be late."

"What's that about?" Yuri demands, as they excuse themselves from the table. Mila shrugs.

"It won't be too good if we look like we're not playing to win, will it? Don't stick so close today."

Yuri looks affronted, and maybe a little scared. Good. Victor hopes the stakes are coming home to him, and his fantasy of winning a better life is running up against a hard reality check.

While his tributes are in the Training Center, Victor and Georgi are on press. Since they'll be on camera all day, Chris and Lilia stop by to help them. Lilia likes Victor better than Georgi, but Victor immediately latches onto Chris by whining about being out of glitter gel for his hair.

"You wanted to get me alone," Chris says, as he's combing Victor's hair back. It's not a style Victor tends to go for often, but it's an excuse to get Chris's hands in his hair. Victor needs someone to touch him who doesn't want something from him, to chase the still-oily feeling of Gaius's fingers from his skin.

Victor doesn't answer Chris's statement of the obvious. If they're under surveillance right now, he doesn't want to say why he wanted Chris alone. He suspects the Capitol will be more worried about his tributes, but he doesn't want to risk it.

"I like them," he says instead, a simple statement he knows Chris will read into.

Chris's hands pause their motions. He sighs slowly, then resumes combing. "That's going to be hard," he says, and Victor feels a profound surge of gratitude that Chris actually gets it. It's so rare to find. Gaius's words from the night before keep replaying in his head.

"I'm not sure how well I'm going to hold up at the public viewings. I might need a distraction."

"Darling," Chris says, sounding delighted. "You know I love causing a good distraction. You say the word and I'll make sure every eye in that room is on me."

"The press is going to be brutal. They'll all be talking about—" Victor clears his throat as it tries to close. "I don't want to talk about it anymore and they keep making me."

He knows he sounds wrong, ragged and desperate, the opposite of what he needs to be in front of the cameras. Chris massages his temples with the balls of his thumbs, smoothing down to the muscles at the back of Victor's neck. His hands feel good.

"You've always been amazing at holding it together," Chris says. "You'll do okay. You can come back here and have a meltdown afterward."

"Not until Mila and Yuri are in bed," Victor sighs, but he knows Chris is right. He's going to have a dazzling smile for the camera and nobody is going to be able to tell he's cracking inside. "Thanks, Chris."

"What else am I here for? Besides making you look amazing, anyway." Chris looks at Victor's reflection critically in the mirror. He's gone for a more dramatic look than he usually would, employing silver highlight shimmer and playing up Victor's natural winter coloring the way that's popular this season. He pokes through his kit until he finds what he's looking for and smears frosted gloss on Victor's lips.

Victor kisses him on the cheek playfully, ignoring Chris's indignation at how Victor has smeared his lipstick and left a lip print on Chris's face. He submits to Chris fixing his lip color before he goes out into the common room to meet Georgi and Lilia.

"Ready?" he asks them. Georgi is in something that looks like a scoop-neck evening gown met a paper shredder. The fringe of it is overwhelming, and it floats all over the place when he moves. Lilia, next to him, is the picture of understated class. Her cocktail dress is slim and deep red, much closer to blood than the District Eleven tributes' wine-stained togas. She has a long, plush fur draped over her shoulders, the older style where the head and the tail is still attached. It's an echo of what she did for the tributes. Chris is in animal print, too; a skin-tight bodysuit only made decent by the sequin-studded short shorts he has on over it.

Lilia raises her eyebrows at both Georgi and Chris. "Accompany me," she says to Victor. "At least you know how to dress yourself without looking like a spectacle."

"I've seen films of your press outfits when you were my age," Chris says, fluttering his ridiculous lashes. He's got glitter in his mascara. "You've calmed down a lot, and now it's my turn."

"Besides, it's the Games! Spectacle is the point," Georgi says, surprising Victor by not crumbling under her criticism. Victor pastes on a smile and holds his arm out for Lilia to take. They ride down to the ground floor, still a level above the Training Center where his tributes will be until dinnertime, and step out into the lobby to face the press.

They had been distracted with Emil and Aiglentine, a crowd of them shouting questions about the twins from Eleven. As soon as Victor and Lilia step off the elevator, though, they're mobbed. The reporters barely care about Georgi and Chris, trailing them.

"Victor! Care to make a comment about the Tiger of Ten?"

"Madam Baranovskaya, what was the inspiration for your latest look?"

"How do you feel about your tributes' chances now that you've seen the crowd's reaction?"

"You look amazing, Victor! Who are you wearing?"

This at least is a safe question. They'll all be interviewed by Phichit at some point throughout the day, and Victor wants to save the substance of his comments for then, but he happily credits Chris for his makeup and names the designer of his suit. The reporters seem to notice Chris, then, hounding him with questions about Mila's fox costume as much as they're trying to pry answers out of Lilia.

The team is like a stone wall. Georgi waxes poetic about how proud he is to have made such an impression on the Capitol—him and his tributes, he hastens to add. Lilia gives short, clipped answers that don't divulge any important information. Chris leans inappropriately close to Victor and makes every third answer an innuendo, and Victor refuses to be drawn into any conversation that doesn't involve his fashion choices.

Victor barely remembers the rest of the day. They spend most of the time in the lobby of the Training Center, with the tributes being put through their paces right under their feet. The reporters and cameras are circling like sharks, waiting to catch the Gamemakers as they exit. They'll bombard them with questions and try to get them to let slip any information about which tributes are good betting material. There's money being put down already, based on nothing more than how the tributes appeared during the parade. Victor is not surprised to hear that Yuri and Mila are doing well in the odds.

Phichit and his retinue finally catch up with the team from Ten. He's a little more understated today; the red of his suit is a little less bright, and he's not wearing the flashy gold high-collar. The gold eyeliner around his eyes crinkles when he smiles.

"Everyone was impressed by your tributes last night! Whose idea was it to go for the wild animal look?"

"That Plisetsky boy is a wild animal," Lilia says dryly.

Victor laughs. "You should have seen his prep team trying to hold him down to get shampooed!"

Phichit laughs with him. "At least he cleans up well! And the other one, too—Mila, right?"

Victor doesn't want the attention on Yuri yet. He doesn't want Mila being 'the other one.'

"That was all Christophe! Chris, your shining hour is upon us." Victor slings a playful arm around Chris's waist. The gossip columns have them in bed together off and on, a stormy relationship that they take great fun in feeding to the press every Games season.

"If you ask me, Mila is the one to watch," Chris says, catching Victor's subtle glance. "She seems quiet, but she'll fool you. She's cunning. Since I already knew Lilia was going for the tiger with Yuri, I had to pick something that suited her. I had one look at her eyes and knew what it was going to be. She's going to outsmart half of them without having to lay a hand on them."

"Is that an endorsement?" Phichit asks.

Chris leans in close to him, close enough to make the big, muscley members of Phichit's crew twitch. Victor sees the motion because he's used to tracking small movements. He was wondering where Phichit was hiding his bodyguards. Now he knows.

"I'll tell you what, darling," Chris says, blinking slowly and looking at Phichit through his lashes in a way that's obviously flirtatious. Victor, feeling the shift of movement through the arm he still has around Chris's waist, lets his smile go indulgent. It wouldn't do for the Capitol to think they were exclusive, after all. "You can take it any way you want."

"Christophe!" Phichit gasps, his hand over his mouth and his eyes twinkling like he's been made privy to something scandalous.

Victor barely remembers the rest of the interview. He lets Georgi, Lilia, and Chris hold the conversation, contributing only when he's asked for his opinion. It seems like he's going to get through today just fine, until Phichit asks the question he's been dreading.

"Victor! One last thing before I go. I've been asking all the mentors this—except JJ Leroy, of course, since he's new. Out of all the Games you've been a part of, does this one feel different? Or does it bring up any memories?"

Phichit's question is innocent, or as innocent as someone can be when they don't understand the scars the Arena leaves. Chris leans his hip against Victor's and Victor realizes his fingers are digging into Chris's skin through the bodysuit. For a Capitol citizen, he's remarkably adept at keeping pain off his face.

"I wouldn't be able to say until we've actually started," Victor says finally. In the back of his mind, he hears the distant sound of wailing. He knows that sound, because it came from his own throat and echoes through his dreams. That kind of thing doesn't belong in front of a camera, though. The Capitol doesn't want to see them act like they're broken, even if they are.

"Always playing it so close to the vest," Phichit says, with a wistful sigh. "That's it for District Ten, ladies and gentlemen! We'll be right back after this break, so don't go away!"

The red light of the camera changes to the steady amber of standby. Victor doesn't exactly sag like a puppet with his strings cut, but he does unwind his arm from Chris's waist and accept a cocktail glass. They're bringing them around now that the lunch buffet is being served, and Victor helps himself, ignoring the way Georgi looks at him.

He wants to get drunk again, but he doesn't. It's too risky with this many reporters around, and he doesn't need a repeat performance of his disheveled stumbling after last night. That can be excused; the opening excitement gets to everyone. If he keeps doing it, he'll get a reputation like the former mentor of Eleven, retired now that Emil Nekola took over. The man lived with a flask or a wine glass in his hand. Victor isn't sure he hasn't drank himself to death back in his home district.

Instead, he's only mildly tipsy by the time he and Georgi part ways with Lilia and Chris to return to the tenth floor. Chris leans in and returns the kiss on the cheek Victor gave him earlier, whispering, "Take care of yourself," before he lets the elevator doors close. Then it's only him, Georgi, and the memories Victor has been trying to banish.

"Will you go pick them up?" Victor asks, loosening his tie as soon as he steps onto the floor. It feels like it's strangling him. "I need to go wash this out of my hair."

"Oh, don't!" Georgi protests. "You should slick your hair back more often, it suits you."

He can't know that Victor said that to someone else years ago. It doesn't change the way it hits Victor like a punch in the chest. Victor disappears into his room and turns on the shower, fiddling with the settings until he has a strong, hot spray. He eschews the bubbles and scented shampoos to scrub at his skin until it feels raw. The gel washes out of his hair as soon as the water touches it, but his makeup is waterproof, and eventually Victor has to smack a button for makeup remover and scrub it off.

He comes out of the bathroom in soft pajamas, his face free of makeup, his hair damp and falling around his face. Yuri and Mila sit shoulder to shoulder at the table, their heads bent low. Mila is moving a piece of potato around her plate, the food arranged like some kind of strategy map.

"How did today go?" Victor asks, loading his plate with tender beef roast and buttery potatoes.

"That kid from Twelve has got to stop following us," Yuri says.

"He's taller than you," Mila says, with a tiny smirk.

"What kid from Twelve?" Victor interrupts, before Yuri can blow up at her.

"I don't know his name. He's the boy tribute, the one whose hair they dyed to look like fire? He was following Mila and I to the stations all day."

"He looks like he can't stand Yuri for whatever reason," Mila says.

The boy tribute. The one Minako is mentoring. Victor thinks it's not surprising that he acts like he hates Yuri—he probably does, based solely on his association with Victor.

"Don't let him overhear anything you're talking about. You didn't go to the stations together, did you?" Mila and Yuri exchange glances and look a little guilty. Victor sighs. "What happened to telling him not to stay so close?"

"We're not going to stop being friends because of this," Mila says, even though it goes against all logic and self-preservation and makes Victor want to shake her. "Maybe it's better if the other districts see us as a team. They won't look at Yuri like an easy target then."

"We _want_ that, remember?" Victor can feel his stress, soothed by the pounding water of the shower, crawling back up his spine again. "We want them to think he's no threat at all, so they underestimate him."

"Hell with that!" Yuri bursts out. "You can't stand the fact that someone might bump you out of your precious Capitol spotlight."

"Yuri," Georgi says. His tone is biting. "Finish your food and go to bed."

"Come on, admit it. You love the fame. Ten should have had a winning tribute by now with _you_ training them, but you don't want to share. You won't even let the girls win, even though you'd get to keep going to fancy parties with someone on your arm."

Victor isn't proud of how fast he comes across the table. One moment he's trying to strangle back the pounding beat of his heart, and the next minute he has Yuri's chin in a bruising grip, dragging him halfway across the table to stare into his eyes, so close that Yuri's quick, frightened breaths puff against his cheek.

"Don't talk about what you don't know," he says lowly. Georgi stands off to the side of him, hands fluttering uselessly. He wants to touch but doesn't dare. Mila is halfway out of her chair, her dinner knife clutched in her hand, wary and waiting for one of them to make a move.

"I know I hate you," Yuri spits. It doesn't hurt as much as Victor expected it to. Of course Yuri sees him the way the other mentors do. It's the picture Victor puts forward.

It still stings a little.

"Hate me as much as you want. I'm doing my best to keep you alive." His question from the night before hangs in the air between them again. Victor holds Yuri's eyes until he looks down and away, pulling against Victor's grasp and finally slapping his hand away.

"Don't talk to me unless I ask you to," he hisses, and stalks out of the room.

Mila watches him go, then turns to look back at Victor. She looks much older than eighteen, or even than nineteen. Her birthday is in two days. Victor plans to have her bring it up in her interview.

"Don't provoke him," she says. "There are only so many times I can go behind you and make him feel like what you're doing is for the best."

Victor takes in the coolness of her expression. "How aren't you angry?" he asks before he can help himself.

"Victor," Georgi says. A warning Victor should listen to.

"I'm furious," Mila says. She smiles, and Victor can see it in the tight set of her teeth. "He could have picked any other year to volunteer, but he did it the year my name was already drawn. He wasn't thinking about anyone but himself and his grandfather. I can respect that, I guess, but it doesn't piss me off any less. I would have been playing to win, you know."

"I know," Victor says.

Some tributes come and go and he's lucky if he remembers their names. Some stand out for a year, then fade when the next tributes come around. He knows he's going to remember Mila Babicheva for a long time. The dead girl walking, with the angry smile and the sad eyes, who watches out for Yuri like he's her brother.

"Lay off him, is all I'm saying. He might come around if you're not being so..." she gestures at him.

Victor looks down at himself, his lips twitching into a wry expression. "I'm not even glammed up right now."

"You look like you've never missed a meal in your life. We both know it's not true, but there it is. Yuri isn't going to remember that you were a dirty ranch hand from District Ten before you were all this. You have to show him." She grins. "Getting rough with him actually probably helped. At least he'll know now that you can get your hands dirty."

Victor almost asks if either of them have ever seen his Games, but he stops himself. Of course they have. They're both old enough to have seen the Quarter Quell, and the Games are mandatory viewing.

"I'll keep it in mind," Victor says. "You go to bed, too."

Mila slips into Yuri's room instead, and Victor lets her. He leans back in the chair with a sigh.

"It's strange, how different they are than our other tributes," Georgi says. "I wonder if it's because they're friends."

"I wish they weren't," Victor says, poking his roast with a fork. "It's going to make things complicated."

He dreams again, that night. It's the Quell, this time, which he should have expected after Phichit's question at the interview. He doesn't dream about _that_ , the thing he keeps shoved to the darkest recesses of his mind, but he dreams about Aster Lightwood.

Victor remembers Aster fondly when he's not dreaming about this. She made saddles and bridles before she was reaped the first time, when Victor was almost too young to remember. She had dark hair and bright, laughing brown eyes. She was good-humored, but she could break a yearling horse quicker than anyone else Victor knew. Steel wrapped in a sunny smile. Victor adored her, when just out of the Games. He and Yakov still weren't speaking to each other at that point, a wedge driven by the deaths in the Arena and Victor's reluctant usurping of his role of District Ten's mentor. Aster was the one who told him how to smile, how to laugh, how to carry himself so nobody would see through how fragile he really was.

The Quell had been hard. Instead of reaping from the districts, the participants were reaped from the pool of victors. Aster, as the only female victor from District Ten, was guaranteed a return visit to the Arena. When he dreams about her, it isn't any of those good things. He only ever dreams of how Aster died.

The Quell’s arena had been in the round, with a brackish lake at the center. There was no cover on the beach, but the Gamemakers put hazards in the woods. The choice was between staying under cover and dying at their hands or braving the beach and dying to another tribute, which was no choice at all.

They’d been in a section of the woods they hadn’t explored before, looking for a likely place to pitch camp overnight. She heard it first; a low hissing noise that overshadowed the distant crash of waves on the lakeshore. She stopped, letting the rest of them walk ahead, her brow furrowed as she tried to figure it out and then—

“Run!” Aster shrieked, clawing at something on her ankle before she broke into a shambling sprint. They didn’t wait to figure out what she was yelling about, but broke into a panicked sprint toward the lake. Victor, bringing up the rear, looked over his shoulder to see.

Aster wasn’t following them. She’d fallen to her knees, surrounded by a heavy kind of green mist, choking and clawing at her throat. Victor took a half-step back, compelled to go after her, but as soon as he reached out and his fingers touched the mist, he jerked back and ran after the others. The ends of his fingers were blistering. Through the haze, he could barely see Aster as she collapsed on the forest floor. Her skin looked like someone had boiled her alive, red and covered in oozing blisters. Victor ran on, chasing after the dark head of hair leading them to the beach and the water.

The dream ends, and Victor wakes, sweat soaking his sheets. It’s past midnight, closer to dawn than night, and he knows he won’t be able to get back to sleep. Victor used to think it was worse that Aster had died alone, but he’s gone back and watched the tapes of the Quell and listened to the commentary since then. Now he knows how painful it was, how the gas had blistered her lungs first and choked her to death as her skin was bubbling. He remembers how he hadn’t even looked behind him until he was too far away to go back for her, how she’d heard the sound of the gas first, had saved them all, but she was the one who died.

He opens the door to his room and hears a voice from the living room. He’s reasonably certain it’s not Georgi, because Georgi can’t be pried out of bed this early for anything short of a catastrophe, and it’s too low to be Mila. Victor makes his steps as silent as he can make them as he approaches.

“—don’t remember you,” Yuri is saying. “I’m sorry. I wish I did.”

There’s no answer from whoever he’s talking to, only the soft rustle of clothing. Victor feels a chill chase its way down his spine and peeks around the corner.

His suspicions were right. It’s one of the Avoxes, sitting across from Yuri, his dark eyes serious and his finger sketching crude shapes out of jam on the plate. Victor wants to smack both their heads together. He has to hope that nobody is bothering to watch them at this hour of the morning.

He lets his elbow thump into the wall. The Avox jumps up from the table and is halfway across the room before Yuri can draw a breath to say anything. Victor rounds the corner, yawning exaggeratedly.

“Coffee,” he says, and the Avox moves to pour it for him. He’s barely older than Yuri. Victor shouldn’t wonder why he’s here, like this, but he does. Usually Avoxes are older, people who’ve had time to build a resume of treason against the Capitol.

“What are you doing here?” Yuri snarls. Victor notices him grab a piece of bread and smear it over their pictogram-jelly conversation. Smart move, destroying the evidence. Not smart enough to keep from getting himself in trouble.

“Dreams woke me up,” Victor says honestly. “It doesn’t really go away, just fades. Things bring it back up all the time.”

He doesn’t expect Yuri to sympathize, and he doesn’t. He grabs a cup of tea and storms off into his own room, not even looking at Victor. It’s better than starting a fight that would wake up the whole floor, but Victor needs Yuri to come around. Interviews aren’t going to go well if he doesn’t listen to Victor’s coaching.

“That’s dangerous,” Victor says aloud, once Yuri’s door has closed behind him. He doesn’t look at the Avox, or make any indication he realizes there’s anyone else in the room. He accepts a cup of coffee like he’s picking it up off the shelf and not taking it from the hands of another person. He does risk a small, sideways glance at the Avox as he takes a sip.

The boy’s eyes are grave, his face so serious for someone so young. His hair is cut short on the back and sides, allowed to grow a little on top—almost the exact same style as JJ Leroy. He doesn’t give any indication he heard Victor, either. He steps back against the wall and crosses his hands behind his back, staring stonily ahead.

“Good boy,” Victor murmurs into his cup, and turns to go down the hall after Yuri.

“Go away,” Yuri says to the knock on his door. Victor doesn’t listen. The knob turns under his hand—of course the Capitol wouldn’t let them lock their doors—and he opens it slowly.

His instincts are right, as a shoe comes hurtling out of the room, glancing off the door. Victor lets it hit and then throws the door open all the way.

“I need to talk to you,” he says, staring Yuri down when the boy picks up a pillow. He takes a long sip of his coffee, daring Yuri to throw it when he has hot liquid in his mouth. “The roof has a nice view. Have you been there?”

Yuri puts the pillow down slowly, realization kindling in his eyes. “Is it cold?”

“Tolerable.” Victor turns to lead the way to the elevator, knowing Yuri will follow him.

Yuri jams the button for the roof almost savagely. They ride up in silence, the space of the elevator car between them. When the doors slide open and they step out, a gust of wind catches them, pulling at their pajamas. Yuri shivers, but he doesn’t complain.

The Capitol is laid out below them, a swath of glittering light as far as they can see. It’s chrome and neon, asphalt and gold, steel and glass. It’s a repulsive, alluring behemoth, swallowing up the countryside in all directions.

“Don’t talk to that Avox boy again,” Victor says. He watches Yuri bristle, his shoulders hunching up around his ears, his fists balling. He remembers being like that once. “Yuri. They’ll kill him if they suspect he’s been trying to communicate. You can’t.”

Yuri looks unnatural when he’s defeated. He seethes, rage barely contained by his skin, nails biting into his palms so that Victor can see his knuckles whitening and crescent marks of pink dug into the flesh. He looks away from Victor, his throat working, like he’s going to fly apart before he can manage to get a word out.

“His name is Otabek,” Yuri bites out. “He’s from District Ten. He remembers me from when we were young. He tried to escape, and they caught him.”

 _Idiot boy_ , Victor thinks, but doesn’t say. He understands the instinct, the compulsion to run when it feels like there’s a noose around your neck. He’s angry, he realizes, because Otabek did something Victor was never able to bring himself to do. He paid the price for it, but the bravery is there, and undeniable.

“You have to understand about Avoxes,” he says, knowing this might be the only time Yuri is receptive to this. “The Capitol doesn’t take treason lightly. They’re mute by intention. If they think he’s been trying to speak with you, you’ll never see him again. Or worse.”

“Worse?” Yuri spits. “How?”

Victor waits until Yuri looks at him. He _needs_ to make sure Yuri knows how important this is, what the Capitol is capable of. 

“They’ll kill him in front of you,” he says, looking into Yuri’s wide, green eyes. He sees the horror dawn in them, the way it had the night before when Victor got his parting shot. It seems like they only manage to communicate like this, under the veil of darkness and secrecy. Like Yuri can’t bear to admit he needs Victor in the light of day.

That’s fine. Victor can work with that.

“They’re—” Yuri can’t seem to find the words. He swallows. “I hate them.”

“Of course you do,” Victor says. And because he never gets to say it, because he never has anyone to say it to, he adds, “I do, too.”

He expects Yuri to make some kind of snide comment. He expects him to say _You? You love it_.

“I’m going to win,” Yuri says instead. “I’m going to take what I can from them. They’ve taken enough from me.”

He looks tired, and so much older than fifteen. Victor thinks it’s funny, how he only sees his tributes as their age when they don’t look it. Yuri shouldn’t be here. He should be back in District Ten, riding horses or handling sheepdogs. He’d thought the same thing before, so many times, but this time it hits him right in the chest.

“You need to let me help you,” he says, and only realizes as he’s saying it how much it sounds like he’s begging. “I can help you win.”

“Don’t ever talk to me about Mila again,” Yuri says. Victor recognizes it as an ultimatum. If he wants to get any cooperation from Yuri, he has to agree to this and never violate it.

“I won’t.”

“Don’t let the stylists put my hair in fucking _ears_ again, either,” Yuri adds, pure disgust in his voice. “I looked ridiculous.”

“You looked great,” Victor counters. “People have been talking about you. I’ve been having to downplay you, except with a few key players.”

“You can’t tell me people actually liked that crap.” Yuri is doubtful, staring out at the Capitol below them with his brow knit. “You know we have cougars, back in District Ten?”

“I live there half the year,” Victor says, voice dry.

“Barely,” Yuri mutters, mouth twisting. Victor knows what he means. He doesn’t have to work for anything anymore, not like the others do. The people in Ten will labor until their bodies give out. For Victor, it will be his soul.

“Anyway, I’ve seen cougars. They’re not… tame. Not glittery and brushed. They’re predators, and they’ll take you down when you don’t even know they’re there. That’s what a tiger is, not whatever they dressed me up as. Don’t they remember why they brought us here?”

“They don’t understand it.” Victor has lived in the Capitol for half a year since he was eighteen, with only a two-year reprieve between his win and taking over old Yakov’s spot as District Ten’s mentor. “They only understand the spectacle. To them, we’re a step below people. Like a horse. You break it so you can use it, then you work it until it’s too old, then you eat it. You know, you’ve seen it done.”

Yuri’s mouth is trembling, his eyes too bright, reflecting the lights in the city below like a thousand points of open flame. For an awful, yawning moment, Victor thinks he might step a little too far to his right, get a little too close. He’s reasonably certain there’s a forcefield up here, but he doesn’t _know_.

He moves quickly, enfolding Yuri in his arms, pulling him in against his chest. He wins a fist in his stomach for his trouble, a string of vicious, choked-off cursing. He wheezes at the impact but holds fast, smothering Yuri’s tears and furious spitting in the front of his shirt. Yuri finally stops thrashing, instead digging his fingers into Victor’s forearms so hard they’re going to bruise. It’s a good thing Victor’s press closet is full of long-sleeved suits.

“Get off me, get _off_ , you bastard, don’t touch me,” Yuri hisses. Once he’s sure the fury at him has overcome whatever moment Victor sensed like fingers crawling up his spine, he lets Yuri go, watching his chest heave with fast breaths. Yuri comes at him swinging, and Victor backs up, dodging his fists, leading him back to the elevator. He steps into another of Yuri’s swings, doubling over the fist that catches him on the inside of his ribcage. It hurts worse than the first punch, a sharp stab of knuckles against bone. Victor has Yuri’s wrist, though, and his arm, too. He pulls Yuri back against the elevator doors with him.

“Calm down,” he says, low, his own breath more rapid than he would have liked. The Capitol doesn’t like him keeping up any kind of regimen now that there’s no chance he’ll end up back in the Arena, and he has to keep any exercise discreet and acceptable. He hasn’t traded blows with a real person in two years. “Yuri. Yuri, you can win this. I saw a victor in you the first time I saw you on the train. I can help you do it, but I know the Capitol. You have to trust me.”

“Trust you,” Yuri says. There’s a mirthless laugh lurking in the back of his throat. Victor doesn’t want to hear what a laugh like that sounds like out of someone so young.

“Do you have another choice?” Victor asks. If he wants Yuri to trust him, the least he can do is lay everything out in the open.

Yuri stops struggling. The laugh that was threatening comes out now, like it’s been scraped from the inside of Yuri’s chest. It hurts as much as Victor thought it would.

“No. I made my choice at the reaping, didn’t I?” He goes silent for a long moment, relaxing bit by bit in Victor’s hold, until Victor feels comfortable releasing him. “You were right. I was an idiot.”

“At least you know it. Ignorance will kill you. Knowledge is how you win. Remember that.”

He punches the button for the elevator, and they get on. Yuri stands a little closer to him, now. He isn’t trying to put all available space between them anymore, like Victor might infect him by being near him.

“Don’t talk to me about the press,” Yuri says quietly. “I don’t want to hear what they’re saying about me. It’ll make it worse.”

“Only if it’s important,” Victor agrees. “Don’t give away any of your skills in public. I’m going to make sure you have the weapon you need to impress the Gamemakers. Make sure you use it.”

Yuri doesn’t ask what it is. He doesn’t seem like he cares much, which does set a new worry thrumming in the back of his head. Did he need to let Yuri keep some of his rage until the Games? If he hadn’t, Yuri might still be talking to that Avox, Otabek. But most of what they’d talked about on the roof hadn’t been Otabek at all.

Yuri tumbles back into bed and is asleep with the practiced easiness of someone who needs to be able to force anything from their mind for sleep—hunger, thirst, sickness, pain. Victor’s body remembers those instincts, but his mind is too active to rest. He sips his coffee slowly and watches dawn break over the hulking shadow of the Capitol.

The day goes much like the one before. Instead of staying in the tower, Victor, Georgi, and their style team have a docket full of talk shows, panels, and public appearances while their tributes train on the lower floors. Victor instructs them both to learn whatever they can about edible plants and field medicine while they have the chance. It was the difference between life or death when he’d been in the Games.

Victor spends most of the day repeating the same approved lines, rehearsed among the team to present a cohesive front and to continue to push the narrative that Victor isn’t going to publicly choose favorites, but he isn’t shutting down any conversation that favors Mila as Ten’s contender. The odds are starting to swing a little bit in her favor, or at least, as much as they ever do with the poorer districts.

“They’ll just come right at me in the Arena,” Yuri says that night, as he’s stuffing his face with buttery mashed potatoes. There’s lamb, which Yuri wrinkles his nose at after one bite. Victor sympathizes. The way they’ve done this leg tastes oily, and far too heavy on the rosemary.

“You'll be ready for them. They'll underestimate you because you're small and Mila is supposed to be the big threat. That means you can strike before they expect, as they open themselves up to you.”

Yuri doesn't have anything to say back to that, mumbling into his plate. Victor, ready to argue him down, examines his bowed head. This isn't like Yuri’s seething silences from before. This is something different.

Mila interrupts his thoughts before he can press. “What do you want us to do at the Cornucopia? At the beginning?”

“It's usually on a flat piece of ground,” Victor says, happy to be diverted onto another topic. “No cover, easy to see everyone making a run in. They don't call it the bloodbath for nothing. I ran from it both times, so you know what I advise.”

“Why not hide nearby and double back for supplies?” Mila asks, fiddling with her fork. All three of them are forcing down the oily lamb, instinct ingrained in them not to waste food even if they hate it. Georgi takes a bite, makes a face, and pushes the lamb on his plate to the side. Victor can see his tributes eyeing it like they have half a mind to ask Georgi if he’s going to eat it or not.

“Tributes have done that and been successful,” Victor says. “There’s the risk of a trap, or the risk that one of the survivors of the bloodbath will come straight at you. If you’re going to double back, make sure you go far enough away that you’ll miss the stragglers.”

“If we can get back, what should we grab?” Mila keeps saying ‘we’ even though she asked to be trained separately, and it makes Yuri dart confused, frustrated little glances at her. Victor isn’t going to call her on it, if only because it seems like Yuri is going to.

“Water. A first aid kit, if you can find one. Dried rations, if they’re there. Weapons. In that order of priority.”

“Not weapons first?”

“How is having a weapon going to help you if you’re dying of dehydration?” Victor stabs another piece of the terrible lamb and chokes it down. “Water. Food. Shelter. _Then_ worry about defending yourselves. I wish I would have asked—can you both climb?”

They exchange looks. “Trees?” Yuri asks. “It doesn’t take a genius to climb a tree.”

“Sure,” Victor says, remembering his own Games, when the trees had been too huge to climb. “The safest place to sleep is up a tree. Or, if there are no trees, same principle—you want high ground. It gives you the advantage of being able to see people coming.”

“Even if they can see you?” Yuri asks. He’s slowed down, now, trying valiantly to finish his plate even if he looks a little queasy.

“You’ll see them first, most likely. So, first priority?”

“Water,” Mila says. “Then food. Then get somewhere high up. Weapons come after that.”

“Good,” Victor says, though they both know she’s not walking away from this one. Yuri should absorb most of this even if he’s not exactly receptive to Victor’s advice.

Yuri finally shoves the last bite into his mouth and gets up from the table abruptly, muttering something about sleep. Victor knows how little he’s been sleeping, even if Mila and Georgi don’t, so he sees through that transparent excuse pretty quick. Something big is eating at him, something beyond his justified hatred of the Capitol.

Maybe it’s all hitting him now. Maybe it didn’t seem real until last night, when Victor laid it all out for him. If that’s what it is, Victor can live with that. Every tribute has a crisis before they go into the Arena. If this is Yuri’s, at least it’s coming now and not in the middle of his interview.

There are no midnight visits between the two of them that night. They all go to bed and appear to sleep well, waking up on the morning of the Gamemaker evaluations well-rested. Victor rides the elevator down to the Training Center with them, this time, taking note of their uncomfortable silence. He’s sure they usually use the elevator ride to complain about him.

He sends them on ahead, where the rest of the tributes are half-heartedly rotating through the stations while they wait to be called. Victor goes to speak with the staff about weapons.

The other mentors are there, standing around in small groups, chatting casually. There’s a brief hiccup in conversation when he arrives, but it’s nothing big, only people noticing when he’s walked through the door. For people like them, spatial awareness is a lifesaving skill. There’s never anyone in a room Victor doesn’t notice, from the servers to the Avoxes to the staff to the rest of the people. He knows that everyone who’s been through the Games is the same way. It never stops.

Victor avoids the rest of them and goes up to the polished, marble counter, where one of the staff is waiting to take his weapon requests.

“I’m not sure what Mila will favor, to be honest,” Victor admits, slowly scrolling through a tablet display of weaponry. “Her asset is her strength, but I think even then she’d be more comfortable having a weapon than going at it barehanded.”

“We have some impact weapons designed to be worn on the fist,” the staffer says helpfully. Her styling is understated, uniform with the rest of the Training Center staffers—her hair is cropped short and gelled firmly down like a shiny helmet, dyed black and gold so she’s easily recognizable from a distance. She wears a neatly pressed grey shirt and grey pants, fading into the background if it weren’t for her hair and her smile, wide enough to seem like it’s been slashed into her face.

“No thank you, I’ll be going close-quarters with Yuri and don’t want to be repetitive.” He scrolls down a little further and stops on one of the images. “What about javelins?”

“Does she have any throwing accuracy?” The staffer seems skeptical. A javelin is a difficult weapon to handle if the user isn’t familiar.

Victor, though, remembers Mila saying that lasso was her strong suit. The technique was a little different, but the principle was the same. Victor is confident she’ll make a good showing.

“Yes, she has some experience with that. Put it down to have those stocked in the room. Now, you mentioned fist weapons. Do you have any with blades?”

“Certainly,” the staffer says, tapping the surface of the tablet to bring up the relevant diagrams. “Single and multiple blades, designed to distribute the impact through the wrist and forearms. Would you like to reserve one of these models for your male tribute?”

“This one,” Victor says, tapping a set of claws. There are four on each hand, and the gauntlets are long enough to cover Yuri’s forearms. A set like this would serve as both a weapon and a little bit of protection. He knows the Gamemakers look at the mentors’ selections in order to better tempt the tributes at the Cornucopia. If he picks this now, a set like it will be there in the Games.

He has to trust that Yuri will listen to him, and not be tempted to go for them in the bloodbath.

“Certainly, Mr. Nikiforov. Will that be all of your selections today?” It’s delivered with the same amount of saccharine helpfulness that Victor expects from all of the staff.

“Yes, thank you. I’ll wait until my tributes have taken their turn.” Victor smiles at her, one of his winning media smiles, and watches her professional expression crack into a little bit of celebrity awe. He retreats from the counter as quickly as he can without making it look like he’s running. He hates when people look at him like that.

Victor finds a place to sit away from the little knots of conversation. He picks up a glass from a passing server. It’s minty, with some fizz and an alcoholic aftertaste. Victor sips it carefully. He wants to stay sober today, even though he can see that it’s not a common attitude among his compatriots. The two mentors from Seven, Aiglentine from Eleven, and Minako from Twelve are all already on their way to roaring drunk and it’s not even noon. He knows it gets worse for all of them, the closer the Games loom, and at least there’s no press in this room. Victor reserves his judgment, barely touches his drink to his tongue, and waits.

The tributes are called in order of district, which means that thankfully JJ and Isabella are the first mentors gone from the room, to collect their tributes and take them back up to their floor in the tower. They’ll spend the rest of the day analyzing their performance in front of the Gamemakers and waiting for the scores to be posted so they can figure out their strategy for interviews. Victor isn’t sad to see them go. They were born for this and they act like it, them and the rest of the Career districts. It’s enough to make Victor violent, and he’s supposed to be curbing those impulses these days.

Sometimes he can tell who does well and who does poorly based on the amount of time elapsed and the expression on the mentor’s face. The mentors from Three, for example, leave blank-faced after their tributes have only been in the evaluation room for a scant handful of minutes each. Victor predicts a bad score there, and mentally writes the tributes from Three off as no threat.

It takes until there’s only half of them left before someone tries to talk to him. At least it’s Celestino, not Minako. He doesn’t want to know what Minako would say to him while she’s this drunk. Celestino, at least, only sports a bare hint of flush across his cheekbones.

“I shouldn’t be telling you this,” is how Celestino starts off, and Victor glances around instinctively. Celestino snorts. “Not that kind of _shouldn’t be telling you_ , we’d be somewhere else for that. This is normal Games sportsmanship _shouldn’t be telling you_.”

Victor bites back a sigh, because he doesn’t care which variety it is, he doesn’t want to hear things Celestino shouldn’t be telling him. “Yes?”

“Minako’s little tribute has been following yours and informing on them,” Celestino says. “I think he thinks he’s gaining something from it.”

Minako’s tribute. The male tribute from Twelve, with the fiery hair. “They’re not going to talk strategy in public, they aren’t stupid.”

“No,” Celestino says, “but they’re friendly in public, and from what I’ve been seeing in the press, that isn’t what you intended. Maybe there’s another talk with them in order.”

Victor shrugs. He can’t tell Celestino about his arrangement with Yuri not to talk about Mila; not because the man can do anything with the information, but because he knows Celestino would judge him for making a bargain like that with a tribute, and for writing one of his tributes off before the Games have even started.

“They’ll only do what they want. I got a pair of strong-willed ones, this year.” Victor touches his drink to his lips. He hopes Celestino will leave it at that. It seems like he’s going to, for a moment, draining a good half of his drink in one go and staring at the door like he can summon the staffers calling them to collect their tributes. He’ll be the last to leave. Victor understands his desire to be well drunk before then.

“I think he’s one to watch,” he says finally. “Minami. He’s smart.”

“If you tell me this, I’ll tell my tributes this, and they’ll kill him,” Victor says shortly. He doesn’t know why Celestino does this. He talks shop with Victor as if they aren’t competitors, as if the children they’re teaching to kill each other aren’t meant to be sole survivors. There’s only one winner, and Victor has to wonder what Celestino’s angle is. He keeps a bright smile that’s full of nothing pasted on his face, trying and failing to read Celestino’s expression.

“May the odds be ever in your favor,” Celestion murmurs into his drink. It’s a warning, when one of them says it, and Victor doesn’t know what he’s being warned about. Just looking at Celestino is too much. Victor needs his head clear of bad memories and political machinations. Who knows what kind of mood Yuri will be in when they emerge from the Gamemakers’ evaluation.

“Excuse me,” he says, not bothering to come up with an actual excuse. Here in the Training Center, when the eyes of the press aren’t on them and they don’t have to cozy up to sponsors, much of the polite ceremony mentors usually treat each other with is gone. Victor probably isn’t the only one trying not to remember things from the past, and Celestino definitely isn’t the only one drowning his sorrows.

He watches the rest of the mentors get called from the room one by one. He feels like he’s sitting on pins by the time they call him. Victor leaves with the attendant, walking down a long corridor from the lounge where they keep the mentors to the reception room where his tributes wait.

Yuri is there when he arrives. As soon as Victor sees his face, he knows there’s something wrong. He’s wild around the eyes, and he won’t look at Victor. His fingers are flexing, open and shut. Victor imagines him with the claws over his hands, weapons extending from his body. He’s seen how fast Yuri moves with a fork in his hand. He bets the claws are something else entirely.

“How did it go?” Victor asks, smiling brightly. It’s not just the two of them; the attendant stays in the room, waiting for Mila to exit her own evaluation before they go back to the Tower together.

“It went fine,” Yuri says shortly. He’s watching the door where Mila will emerge. He turns away from Victor and scrubs the heels of his hands on his thighs. Victor reads his body language as discomfort, not aggression. Something happened in the room with the Gamemakers.

“Yuri, you should tell me how you did! If you were good, we can get something special to celebrate,” Victor says, trying again. He has to keep up the Capitol enthusiasm. The attendants are unobtrusive and silent on duty, but they’re employees of the Tower, not Avoxes. They can gossip like the best of them in their off hours.

“Not here,” Yuri grinds out. He’s glaring, his jaw clenched so tight Victor feels like he should be able to hear Yuri’s teeth creak.

“I guess you’re just anxious to find out how Mila did,” Victor says, with a staged wink. He should have a talk with Yuri about the way he appears in public. Everyone expects the tributes to play along with a smile, even if everyone knows how much they hate it. It’s part of the show of power, that the Capitol can control everything about them down to the what they feel about the Games. There’s stark disbelief written all over Yuri’s face, easy to read from a mile away. The gossip will be going wild about Victor’s intractable little animal.

The door opens then, and Mila exits, raking her fingers through her short red hair. She’s sweating, breathing a little hard, but she doesn’t look anywhere near as unsettled as Yuri does.

“Ready to go?” she asks, breathless. “Yura, you look like you swallowed a snake.”

“Shut up,” Yuri mutters, but there’s no heat to it, not like the viciousness he had with Victor. It still doesn’t seem like he’s going to be at all forthcoming. Victor resigns himself to not finding out anything about either of their performance until they’re back in the Tower.

But Yuri won’t talk to him at all. He takes one look at the living room, where Chris, Lilia, and Georgi are sipping cocktails and waiting for the scores to be televised, and retreats into his room, slamming the door. Mila hesitates, clearly torn between sitting down with the rest of them and going after Yuri. Victor puts a gentle hand on her shoulder and squeezes.

“You don’t have to go smooth things over whenever he has a tantrum,” he says in a low voice. “That’s not your job.”

“Sit down with us,” Chris says, patting the couch next to him. It’s the right move. Mila gets along well with her stylist, which is more than Victor can say for Lilia and Yuri. He takes a chair across from Lilia, still in reach of the coffee table but leaving the open seat for Yuri when he joins them.

“Did he say anything to you?” Victor asks. He balances a small plate on his knees with a slice of fluffy cake. It’s one of his preferred indulgences of the Capitol; it tastes like spun sugar and air.

“He was nervous,” Mila answers, which isn’t an answer. Victor would prefer to hear everything that Yuri says outside these rooms, word for word, but asking that would alienate them both, even if it would be for their own good. 

He has half a day with each of them tomorrow to give them a crash course in dealing with the media, specifically Phichit. He hasn’t decided on the emotional angle he wants to take with Mila quite yet. He could have her stay aloof and proud, tell her to hold herself straight and maybe practice a small, clever smirk in the mirror with her until she can look like she has a wealth of secrets under her belt. He could also draw out some of the cutting humor she sometimes showed when she and Yuri were bickering at the table. Seeing some of that personality would make her likeable and charming.

Yuri, he’s sure, he’ll only ever get to be genuine. He has to figure out how much genuine Yuri he’s going to let loose on the Capitol. They’ll have to work on his scowling, his hunching, and his spitting insults. Georgi will have to teach him how to sit without ruining the line of his suit, how to smile and laugh without looking like he was baring his teeth. Victor would ask him to talk about his grandfather. It would be a good contrast with Mila, and he’s sure Yuri can carry it.

Victor only has to _convince_ him, which might prove more difficult than it should be. It’s growing closer to the time when the scores will be broadcast, and Yuri still hasn’t come out of his room. Victor taps his nails against his plate. It’s empty. He doesn’t remember eating the slice of cake he got for himself. He doesn’t remember much of the conversation around him, either.

“Back with us?” Chris asks, nudging Victor playfully with his toes. “You’re deep in thought.”

“Strategy,” Victor says, watching the big screen opposite the furniture. Right now they have the volume down, the pre-announcement shows speculating on whose score will be high and whose will be low. They have the major networks on split-screen, with the volume on Phichit’s show, because his commentary is the least grating to listen to. Victor can’t say that about his predecessor. Thank goodness for Phichit.

“Ah, Mila,” Victor says, remembering. “How did your session with the Gamemakers go?”

He’s embarrassed he’s forgotten about it this long. Mila’s blue eyes are cool, like she was waiting, too.

“I started out on single targets,” she says. “You can throw a javelin with a lot more force than a lasso. Then I lined two of the practice dummies up, one behind the other, and threw one javelin through both of them. Right here.”

Mila taps the side of her breast. Her face is still and serious. The hair on the back of Victor’s neck prickles.

 _She knows she can do it now_ , he thinks, fingers tightening around the plate. It digs little lines into his fingers. _She wasn’t sure while she was holding back in front of the other tributes, but now she knows she can win_.

“How many did you line up in a row before the Gamemakers dismissed you?” Victor leans forward and cuts a tiny slice of cake. Maybe he’ll taste it this time.

“Three and a half,” Mila says. “The javelin isn’t long enough to go through four, and I’m strong, but I can’t throw it through and through.”

“Three and a half,” Chris says, and whistles. “Mila, darling, you’re going to be unstoppable.”

Mila reaches forward to fill her plate so she doesn’t have to answer. The anthem comes on the screen a moment later, all the split screens dissolving into one broadcast as the Gamemakers took over the channels.

“Will you go get him?” Victor asks, but Mila is already getting up. She doesn’t answer.

“Something changed for her in there,” Lilia says. She’s seen many, many tributes come and go in her time as a stylist, and Victor has learned to give her opinions weight. He wishes Lilia had picked any other time to agree with his instincts.

“I don’t care what they give me!” Yuri yells from inside his room, and Victor is up out of the chair before anyone else can move.

Georgi gives a false, loud laugh. “He’s so confident! That Yuri. So sure he’s going to win no matter what the score is!”

Victor doesn’t hear what either of the others say in response. He’s halfway down the hall to Yuri’s room. Mila has her shoulder set against the door, shoving. It’s budging a good four inches at a time, but Yuri slams it back shut.

“Go away, hag!” he shouts. “I don’t need you to come handle me like some skittish horse!”

“If I had a horse with your temper, I would’ve shot and eaten it by now!” Mila shouts back. “You’re being impossible!”

“Yuri,” Victor says sharply, “you have to stop this and come out to see your score. It’s not an option.”

Mila staggers forward, all the weight gone from behind the door at once. Yuri stands out of range of its swing, his face twisted in disgust and fury. Victor is going to have to teach him how to keep his expression clean, too.

“It doesn’t matter how badly you did. I’ve already secured sponsors, remember? You’ll be fine. Come eat something and evaluate the competition. This is your best chance to pair what you’ve seen them do in the Training Center with their scores and decide who’s dangerous.”

Victor isn’t sure which part of that gets Yuri moving, but he stalks past them without a word. Mila leans her head against the doorframe for a moment, her eyes closed, and lets out a long sigh.

“I think eating a horse with Yuri’s temperament would give you indigestion,” Victor says, and Mila smiles, a tired shadow of a real expression, her eyes still closed. She’s nineteen, Victor remembers. He hates when he remembers these things.

“I could make jerky,” she says, and pushes herself up again, shoulders squared.

The first few scores shake out as Victor expects. High in District One and Two, matching fours in District Three, high in District Four. The Gamemakers release the scores slowly, to give betting houses a long, clear timestamp on the stream for anyone who tries to argue with paying out their share. The tributes are shown as headshots first, then zoomed out to a full-body turnaround. They’re in their training outfits, not their parade costumes. It helps Victor better place the faces with the districts.

District Five has one surprising score, an eight from the female tribute. Victor makes a mental note of it, studying the girl’s portrait. She’s one of the older tributes at seventeen, her blonde hair buzzed short from her ears up to her temple and braided back along the top of her head. When the image of her zooms out, she has her arms crossed and her weight leaned on one hip. She looks fierce.

Victor was impressed by the styling from District Six, but he didn’t expect the tributes to be anything special. He’s proven wrong when the male tribute, Guang Hong Ji, scores a nine. He looks serious in his headshot, but Victor can see a little tightness around his jaw that means he’s scared. He looks younger than the female tribute from Five, but he’s the same age. His counterpart scores a five, which means the Gamemakers were bored and went with the middle of the road. Victor takes note of Guang Hong, of the steady set of his shoulders and the way he barely blinks at the camera, and discards the girl from Six as unimportant.

Seven has one to watch out for, a Leo de la Iglesia who also commands a score of nine. Eighteen, like Mila. The ages in this group trend higher than he likes when he’s trying to make sure Yuri is the victor. Leo, for all he has a high score, has a bashful smile. and looks like he’s the opposite of a threat. When the camera zooms out, he’s shifting from one foot to the other. Victor is sure, coming from Seven, that the score came from him being handy with an ax. The girl from his district, a fourteen-year-old, ties him with a nine. She’s tall for her age. Someone who hasn’t missed many meals as a child, not like most of the rest of the tributes. Her arms are muscled, her brown hair cut short.

Nothing special seems to have come from District Eight, with scores on the low end for both tributes. They’re older than Yuri, both sixteen, but they’re terrified and showing it, their eyes wide, hands trembling.

“Yuri,” Victor says, as the scores from Nine are announced. Nothing special. He doesn’t even remember what the tributes look like, his gaze on Yuri’s white face, his lips pressed together and caught between his teeth until his mouth is bloodless. “If you did badly, I can still help you win.”

“No,” Yuri says tightly.

Mila’s score is up next. She looks haughty and commanding in her headshot, her mouth set, a grim look on her face, her hands on her hips when the camera zooms out for the turnaround. A ten pops up in red underneath her name, and Victor grins. Chris wraps Mila up in an enthusiastic, congratulatory hug, which she returns a little too hard, forcing the breath out of him.

“Looks like three and a half targets was enough,” Victor says, still smiling. Ten is a fantastic score. He couldn’t have hoped for better.

Yuri’s headshot comes up next. His eyes are sullen, but his face is blank. In the full-body shot, his shoulders are slumped. On the three or four seconds of looped recording, the skin around his mouth pinches into a frown that’s gone in the next second. It could be better.

The _eleven_ that appears on the screen, however, could not.

“Yuri!” Mila yelps, and Victor can’t tell if she’s delighted or horrified. It makes a mess of their strategy, that’s for certain. Everyone will want to know how he got that score.

Victor _needs_ to know how he got that score.

“Yuri, what did you show them? Did you figure out which weapon I sent in for you?”

“Yeah.” Yuri is looking at him from underneath his bangs, his green eyes sharp. “Yeah, I got the claws, you bastard. You made me get close. They’re a slashing weapon, you know, not stabbing.”

Yuri gets up from his spot next to Mila on the couch, coming closer to Victor like he’s prowling. Like with Mila, Victor’s instincts sharpen.

“Sure, you can stab someone first,” Yuri says, and that’s when he moves, in underneath Victor’s arm, upsetting the plate from his lap, inside his instinctive guard so quickly that if Yuri really had claws attached to the knuckles he had kissed up against Victor’s ribs, Victor would be dead.

“Yuri!” Georgi gasps.

“You could stab someone first, but you have to get the claws free.” Yuri draws his hand back. “It’s better to start low and bring it high.”

Yuri’s knuckles are against his skin again. It’s not a blow, just like the first time wasn’t a blow. It’s a demonstration of motion, as Yuri’s fist starts below the belt buckle of Victor’s slacks and then drags upward, miming the motion Yuri would need to slash through Victor’s intestines and leave him bleeding.

“It’s so slow and messy that way, though,” Yuri says. “You’ve seen them bleed an animal in the slaughterhouse, right? Pigs and sheep and cattle?”

“I have,” Victor says, refusing to let his voice waver. Yuri’s eyes are on him, hot with fury at his casual response.

“Here’s the best place,” he says, drawing the knuckles of his closed fist across Victor’s throat. His knee is planted in the chair beside Victor’s thigh. They’re close enough that Victor can feel his body heat, his breath. “That’s what I did. I showed them how those kinds of weapons work on the practice dummies. Guess they replaced the ones you impaled.”

He says the last to Mila, who watches him, unblinking. She and Victor are the two most relaxed people in the room. Georgi’s face is white, his fingers tight around his glass. Lilia’s back is ramrod straight and her face is absolutely still, concealing anything she might think of Yuri’s outburst. Chris’s shoulders are tight, his hands gripping his own knees.

Victor sent them in that room to impress the Gamemakers, like all the tributes are supposed to do, but they found something different. They found someone inside themselves that could imagine a person on the other side of their weapon and strike at it anyway. They found the killer they would need to use to survive the Games.

Yuri doesn’t back away. He’s in Victor’s space, one hand braced against the back of the couch while the knuckles of the other rest on his throat.

“Don’t you want to see what everyone else scored?” Victor asks. He sees the flash of fury in Yuri’s eyes, feels it shiver through his body as a wave of tension, tightening his fist, deepening his scowl.

“None of them will be higher than me,” Yuri says, so sure of himself. One of the earlier tributes scored an eleven, but Yuri is probably right. Nobody ever scores a twelve.

Yuri straightens up slowly, hands still clenched. The whole thing is confusing, and Victor has to get to the bottom of it before interviews the day after tomorrow. Yuri impressed the Gamemakers, got an excellent score, and he’s found the part of himself that will protect him in the Arena. For Victor, this is the best night he’s had so far.

Yuri, though, is acting like it’s the worst thing that could have happened.

When they look back at the scoreboard, they see that unexpectedly, the twins from Eleven have each pulled a seven, which is a respectable number. Celestino’s tiny little tribute from Twelve scores a six, which could mean nothing or anything. The other tribute from his district is slight and frail-looking. She has the worst score of the night at an abysmal three. Victor can see she’s ill with something chronic and degenerative just by looking at her. She’ll die quickly. Maybe, given her condition, that’s a mercy.

Yuri gets up and goes back into his room without another word to anyone. Mila watches him go, her face unreadable.

“I’m tired, too,” she says, getting up and brushing crumbs off her training uniform. “Since you’re training us separately, will I go with you or Chris first thing in the morning?”

Does Victor want an easy morning or a terrifyingly difficult one? It isn’t a hard choice.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, and Chris will meet with you in the afternoon about styling.”

“That gives me the morning with him,” Lilia says, her lips pursed tightly. “I hope you aren’t planning on seeing me again next year. I have a feeling I’ll be seriously considering retirement by the end of the day.”

“Like you’d let any mouthy teenager chase you out of this,” Victor says, smiling at her. “You weathered me, didn’t you?”

“ _You_ were polite to me, even when you sharpened your tongue on everyone around you like a rude little savage. He is worse.”

Victor feels an odd sense of victory that Yuri is worse for Lilia to manage, then feels sick with it. That only means he’s better at doing the bidding of his masters. If he had met Yuri when he was seventeen—if Yuri had gone the year after him, instead of ten years later—he knows he would have admired him. Maybe when Yuri wins, if Mila can keep him alive and he can keep himself out of trouble, Victor will get to tell him that.

Maybe Victor will get to tell him that he admires Yuri now, too, even when he wants to scream at him in frustration.

Later that evening, Victor stares at his reflection in the mirror for a long, long time. He knows he’s avoiding his bed. He can’t afford to spend tomorrow half-on, tired out by nightmares sprung from his own memory. He has to keep his head clear. Yuri is going to take all his skill tomorrow, because any of that rage coming through at the Capitol, at Phichit, especially at the audience—all of it will undermine what they’ve built. Mila and Yuri will have resources to draw on in the Arena. Victor is sure that the reception after the interviews is going to be incredibly productive.

He hates the sleeping medication the Capitol produces. It leaves him helpless, completely insensate to the world around him. When he has a bad night, he usually asks Chris to stay. But Chris has just as busy a day as he does, preparing Mila’s interview outfit. So he has nobody to watch him, nobody to stay sober and wake up if someone comes to kill him. It’s the Capitol, nobody is coming to kill him, and even if someone was it would be the President’s men themselves, but Victor can’t shake the terror that grips him at the thought of being helpless with nobody to watch his back.

He lies awake until nearly midnight, and then he dreams.

It’s the Quell again. Victor knows this dream. He’s had it a thousand times, a thousand different nights. He’s watched it play out helplessly under his eyelids. He’s tried to change the course and failed. 

“Victor!”

It’s always how the dream starts; that cry, in that voice, wrenching at his chest. Then the impact of a body, knocking him aside. Then the noise, the hideous thud of metal into flesh, the wet sucking sound of it being withdrawn. Victor’s body moving, the leather grip of his knife firm in his hand, the bite of it into the stomach of their attacker, the wrench as he draws it up. He knows why he’s having this dream. The killing blow he dealt in the Arena is the same as Yuri demonstrated in the sitting room, splitting open the belly.

Victor doesn’t stay to watch the girl die. He clutches the other body to his chest, the one that called his name, the one that pushed him out of the way of the sword strike that flayed his chest open, baring the white, bony lines of ribs. His face is spattered with blood, pale, his brown eyes going glassy. His chapped, pink lips are curved into a tiny, sad smile.

When Victor wakes, teeth clenched tight around the raw scream trying to escape him, the phantom sensation of blood slicking his hands, he staggers into the bathroom and portions out a dose that will carry him dreamless until morning, and then falls back into bed.

His alarm wakes him. It seems like only seconds have passed since he laid down, but the clock reads seven in the morning, and the lights in the room come up around him. Victor splashes water on his face and brushes his teeth. He braces his hands on the sink and stares into the mirror, just like he did the night before.

He hasn’t had that dream in a year. Nothing from his tributes the previous year had brought it up. He thought he was done with it, after the season between the Quell and the next Games, the one he spent either drunk, or laying in bed, or both. He remembers rising from the stupor of alcohol and grief to go meet his new tributes, looking in their eyes and knowing both of them would die. He remembers feeling like something snapped inside him, like being plunged into ice water that insulated him down to his core. He can’t find that feeling anymore, and it terrifies him.

Mila is waiting for him at the breakfast table. It seems Lilia has already kidnapped Yuri to the other side of their suite, based on the amount of yelling coming from the other room, which leaves Mila and Victor the sitting room.

“I’ve been thinking about our personal strategy,” Victor says as he sips his coffee. Mila knows this is all for show. He can rely on Mila to make this easy, thankfully. He needs something easy, right now. “Tell me about your family.”

“There isn’t much to tell. My father’s been dead for years. In the spring, my mother helps with birthing season, and every other time she works in the slaughterhouse. No siblings.” Her face is closed off. There might be a story there she isn’t telling him, but if Victor can’t get it out of her, she’s not going to share it with the cameras.

“Okay, so we’ll leave that. Phichit might ask you about it, but the answer you gave me is fine. You’re going to go in playing confidence. You’re strong, you’re the oldest in the Games this year, you scored high, you can win it and you know it. That’s what we’ll give them.”

“I could win it,” Mila says. Murmurs, really, her voice low. The skin around her mouth tightens. The corners of her eyes pinch. Her lower lip quivers a little. Then the little tics pass, and her face goes smooth and impassive. He’s impressed.

“You're good at containing your anger,” Victor says, and watches surprise cross her face.

“That’s the first time anyone has told me that,” she says. “I used to throw people that made me angry. Boys.”

“Oh, slip that in somewhere.” Victor leans in. “Now is when you go out there and show them all you're not afraid.”

Victor watches the perfect media face begin to crumple in stages. He has a detached thought that at least this is happening today, not tomorrow when they already have makeup on her, or in front of a camera. He still shocks himself at how like them he can be.

“I am afraid.” Her voice is raw, like it's scraped out of her throat with the edge of a knife. “I'm going to die in there. How can I not be afraid?”

Victor doesn't deserve to comfort her after the thought he had, but there's nobody else. He moves to the couch beside her and wraps her in a one-armed hug. She presses the heels of her hands to her eyes with her teeth clenched, and Victor watches her do the same thing he's done for years—press it down. He wants to burn the Capitol down around their ears, but he's one man, and she's one girl. They can't do anything against this.

“You told me you were furious at Yuri,” he says, because he has to get her talking. If Phichit gets ahold of her like this she'll break down onstage. “Did he talk about volunteering before?”

Mila laughs, full of irony. “Yuri worships you. Or, he did, I'm not sure if he does anymore. You got out. You played the game and won. The worst thing you could have told him was that it's survival and not a victory. He always talked about volunteering and winning. He said he was going to use his win to help everyone in Ten.”

That gives Victor a chill. _They'll never let him_.

“Yuri is out to prove something. He said he'd volunteer at fifteen if he hadn't been reaped yet, because he wanted to do it younger than you had. I knew when my name was called that he was still going to do it. He's more stubborn than anyone I've ever met.” Mila takes a long breath and lets out a long sigh.

“That's why I'm going to protect him. I'm going to make sure he wins and can go home to his grandfather. He deserves it. I put in for tesserae so many times, I knew what I would get called up eventually. Maybe it means something like this.”

Victor can't argue with her, even if he disagrees. She’s braver than anyone he's ever mentored.

“Talk about how mad at him you are. Phichit will want anything he can use in Yuri’s interview, and Yuri needs all the help he can get.”

Mila laughs, and it almost sounds like her regular wry humor. Victor pats her shoulder, a little awkwardly. It's been a long time since he's been comforting someone like this.

“Okay,” he says, squeezing her shoulder. “Let’s practice that media face. Smile for me, Mila.”

It’s a productive first half of the day. Victor throws the kinds of questions he’s gotten from Phichit and from his predecessor, watching her impassive expression waver under all kinds of personal questions. Does she think of Yuri as a brother? Is she angry with him? Would she kill him, given the chance? It’s best to get her reactions to these questions now, to practice them before she’s on camera. Victor tells himself that as Mila’s knuckles turn white on her own knees, fingernails digging into her clothes like she’s trying to reach the skin underneath. 

He doesn’t let up, seizing on hesitations like a blade seeks a gap in armor. A hundred emotions flash across Mila’s eyes, outrage and fury not the least of them, but by the time they’re done, she’s learned to freeze their blue depths. Her smile is unshakeable, and she practices a movement with her hair that’s flattering and will give her time to think if she needs it, sweeping it over her ear with the hand further away from the camera.

“One more thing,” Victor says, media bland, his expression as stretched and fake as hers. “I have to ask you what you think of the Capitol, Mila. Was it everything you expected?”

Mila’s lips practically turn white where she presses them together. Victor holds her eyes, like he has with all the rest of the questions, waiting for her to master herself and answer. He waits a long time.

“It’s beautiful,” Mila says, her smile stretching even wider. It looks garish on her face. Victor can hear her saying _I hate it_ , but that’s only because he’s listening for it. They won’t know the difference. “I love looking out the window at night and seeing all the lights.”

“Oh, you’re right, that is wonderful!” Victor enthuses, doing his best Phichit impression. “Nothing but glitter and gold as far as you can see. Oh, I know— if you win, what would you like to see most?”

The question rattles even her hardest-won composure. Her breath hisses in through her teeth, her smile faltering.

“My mother,” she says, her voice choked.

“That’s not going to work,” Victor says, and hates himself for being this ruthless. He needs her to sell it. He needs her to be able to withstand, because Yuri is going to be all over the place.

Mila’s hand balls into a fist, and Victor braces himself. She’s strong. If she decides to swing, he’ll have to go to a late-night clinic and have them work on the bruise until he can cover it with makeup. He can see her register his posture, the way he’s coiled in his chair, ready to fight back, and she slowly lets her hand relax.

“I’d like to go to a zoo, I think,” Mila says, her false-bright smile back on her lips. “I’ve heard of them in stories. There are all kinds of animals, and sometimes even clones of extinct species. I’d like to see that.”

“That’s perfect, Mila. We’re done. Relax.” Victor lets go, turns the public face off, and slumps into his chair.

Mila gets up immediately, putting as much distance between them as possible. She stands across the room, just breathing, her hands laced on the back of her neck. Victor stays silent. He doesn’t know what to say to her to help her, and she looks like she’s trying to work through it on her own. He can give her privacy. She doesn’t get much of it, now.

They all come back together for lunch, Yuri trailing behind Lilia with a dark look on his face. It didn’t bode well for Victor’s immediate future.

“Show me what you learned,” Lilia says sternly when they sit down. Yuri, caught in the midst of preparing a probably spectacular flounce onto the sofa, glares at her in mute fury. Slowly, his spine straightens. His shoulders go back, his head up, and when he takes his seat he passes one plate to Lilia before starting to serve himself. 

They’ve sent up something light, since the tributes aren’t training today. The little corner sandwiches remind Victor of one too many public viewings of the Games, in years where the Arena was somewhere with agreeable weather. He nibbles at them anyway.

The elevator dings softly, and Chris enters. He’s dressed casually today, his black leggings decorated with scalloped red fabric that flutters when he moves. He wears a loose red top with a plunging V cut, showing off his chest.

“Good morning,” he says, giving them all a flirty smile before taking a seat on the couch next to Mila. “How did your camera training go, darling?”

“Wonderful,” Mila says, with a perfectly dazzling smile. She angles her body toward Chris like Victor taught her, crossing her feet at the ankles and resting her hands on her knees.

“Oh, that’s good,” Chris says. He glances over at Victor. “Well done.”

“She did all the work,” Victor says, then frowns. “Where’s Georgi?”

“Yuri made him cry.” Lilia sips her wine slowly.

Victor has to bite the inside of his cheek hard to keep from laughing. He’s glad to have Georgi as a partner for the Games, he reminds himself. Georgi is good at working a crowd. There’s a certain charm to his over the top romanticism. He refrains from lecturing Yuri about the importance of Georgi’s role to his success. He’s about to spend half a day ripping Yuri apart at the seams, he doesn’t need to start it off on the worst possible note.

They all seem to be putting off the end of lunch for as long as possible, so Victor finally has to move things along. “What are your plans with Mila this afternoon, Chris?”

“We’ve got to teach her to walk in heels,” Chris says, nudging her with his elbow. “She did fine standing still in them once we got her balanced, but you should have seen her about to fall over when I was getting her on and off the chariot.”

“Doesn’t make any sense why anyone would want to walk on their tiptoes like that.” Mila keeps her media face on through lunch, practice for tomorrow, and she nibbles neatly at her sandwich with a small smile, the kind Victor taught her invites people to laugh with her joke.

It works, because Chris laughs. “Darling, when you see what it does for your legs, you’ll understand. Shall we?”

He stands and offers his arm. Mila hasn’t had to deal with this kind of formal entrance before, but she improvises well, setting her plate aside, getting up, and laying her arm on his elbow like she’s done this a thousand times. Victor wishes she and Yuri had been reaped in separate years. She would adapt to the Capitol.

“That is my cue to leave,” Lilia says, rising as well. “I have to go oversee the rest of the team to make sure they haven’t done anything to my design. Those girls always feel like they should embellish.”

“Go stop them from covering him in sequins,” Victor laughs, catching the horrified look on Yuri’s face as Lilia glides to the elevator. If he can get Yuri to have half her presence, he’ll have succeeded.

The elevator doors hiss shut after Lilia, the door closes after Chris and Mila, and then Victor is left alone with Yuri, the two of them watching each other warily from across the room.

“This is going to be difficult to do if you still want me not to say anything to you about the press,” Victor starts, because if he’s going to spend the afternoon beating his head against a brick wall, he might as well start it off with some fun.

“Idiot,” Yuri huffs. “Of course you can talk to me about the interview, what else would we be doing here?”

Victor catches him trying not to smile and lets a smile take over his own face, one that feels more real than any of the ones he’s put on lately. It’s wry, curling one side of his mouth more than the other. He wonders if Yuri can see the difference.

“So far, you’re a big mystery,” Victor says, bringing it back to the conversation they need to be having. “I’ve been much cagier about you than about Mila, so the eleven will come as a complete shock to the Capitol. They’re going to want to know everything about you. I want you to talk about your grandfather.”

He can see Yuri’s expression sour, see the twist of his mouth. He knows that Yuri’s family is the _last_ thing he wants to give the Capitol, but they don’t have a choice.

“We can work on keeping that off your face later. Right now, I’m going to do the same thing I did with Mila: ask you the same questions Phichit is likely to when he gets you on the air. If you hear them now, it’ll make it easier to come up with the right answer and control your face in front of the cameras.”

Yuri takes a visible breath, his chest expanding to its full breadth and collapsing as he exhales. His face smooths out. He looks like a kid trying not to get caught doing something he’s not supposed to. Victor hopes by the end of today he’ll do better.

“A volunteer from District Ten!” Victor starts. Yuri has never been the target of his full media presence before, and Victor can tell it’s unsettling him now. Victor’s smile is the one he uses for interviews, not the one for crowds of fans. It’s a little more intimate, a little less stretched across his face. “Tell me about that, Yuri. Why did you volunteer?”

It’s worse with him than it was with Mila. She tried to control it, tried to tamp down her feelings. It seemed like she was used to doing it, so she caught on pretty quickly to what he wanted. Yuri, though, wants to fight him for every inch. He tries to hedge around his answers. Victor has to workshop his words with him, and he can feel Yuri becoming less genuine and more rehearsed the longer they do it. It’s not what he wants.

“Why can’t I say I want to go home?” he bursts out, after Victor tells him he has to be more enthusiastic about the Capitol. “It’s true! I ha—”

Victor throws his plate down onto the table. It shatters, of course, shards flying. The door opens down the hall, and Chris comes running. Two Avoxes seem to materialize from the walls with cleaning materials, sweeping up the shards.

“Whoops!” Victor says, laughing a little. “Just slipped right out of my hands. Sorry about that!”

Chris catches his eyes, a little frown line between his eyebrows, but Victor waves him away. He’s done a lot worse than this to cover up for a tribute that can’t keep his mouth shut. Yuri, who jumped out of his chair when Victor threw the dish, sits back down slowly. It’s the first time all day that Victor has seen his face go successfully, utterly blank. He can’t read what’s going on inside Yuri’s head right now. He wonders if it’s because Yuri doesn’t know what to think.

“I just don’t know why anyone would want to live anywhere but here,” he says, forcing a bright laugh. “I was so startled, I dropped the plate.”

Mila comes out of the far bedroom, then, her steps exaggeratedly slow. She’s getting the hang of the shoes, but it’s taking time. “Chris?”

“Coming! Victor says it was nothing.” Chris moves to swiftly take Mila’s arm before she can topple over, escorting her back into the other room.

“Remember,” Victor says after the door shuts, “the people of the Capitol are the ones betting on your success. The powerful ones will be sending you gifts in the Arena, through me. They want to hear how much you love it.”

Yuri smiles. It looks more like he’s baring his teeth. Victor thinks he’s going to let Yuri keep that smile, because it’s only a sliver on the right side of feral and intimidating.

“Of course I love it,” Yuri says, and he almost sounds genuine. “I’ve never eaten so well in my life! I can’t wait to win so I can share all of this with grandpa.”

Victor gives him a nod. It’s a good save, even if he had to destroy a plate to get Yuri to take this seriously.

“You’ll be the youngest to win the Games in twenty years, if you do it,” Victor says. Before Yuri, that was him, but he doesn’t feel anything about the record or about giving it up. He asks Yuri about himself anyway. “You’ll be unseating Victor Nikiforov as District Ten’s mentor in a few years. Do you think you’ll be ready to lead future tributes to glory?”

Phichit would never ask a question like this. Victor knows he’s past the place he should stop. He should do as the Capitol has always done—as _he_ has always done—and let Yuri think this will all be over after his win. He finds he can’t. Yuri has to win, because otherwise Mila’s protection, her selflessness will be for nothing. Victor has to make sure he knows what he’s going to face on the other side. 

He’s running out of time.

“I’ll do my best,” Yuri says. His back is perfectly straight. His shoulders are back, his hands clasped in his lap. Lilia did good work with him. The way he’s sitting, he won’t ruin the line of his suit.

“Tell them that for now, you’re going to focus on the Games.”

“For now, I’m going to focus on the Games,” Yuri repeats blandly.

“That’s great! That’s a great strategy. Let’s talk about the Games, then. That high score was a surprise! How did you pull that off?”

“I—” Yuri stops and squints at Victor. “I can’t answer that.”

“Phichit will try to get you with it. Tributes have slipped up before, dropped hints about their weapons. Don’t.”

“Why did you give me those?” Yuri asks. The blank face he’s been practicing falls away in an instant. He looks furious, like he always does, but underneath it there’s something else. It’s like he thinks Victor hurt him.

“You’re the Tiger of District Ten, Yuri. You’re vicious and untameable. Gossip apparently has it that I can’t control you. You’re rude to nearly everyone. If I’d given you another weapon, you might have done pretty well for yourself, but you never would have played into the showmanship of it all.” Victor winks at him. “You have to keep surprising your audience. I’ve been building up your mystery factor. People will be waiting to see you on that broadcast tomorrow, and what you’ll give them will be the best sides of yourself. They’ll wonder how you came away with that score, while you talk about your grandfather back home and smile and tell them that you want to share all of your success with your family. They’ll eat it up.”

Yuri’s hands clench on the arms of his chair. He’s staring at the floor, his bangs falling in his eyes. Victor wishes the style team had cut his hair, but he supposes they wouldn’t have done that because of the way they styled it for the parade. It’ll be a liability in the Arena.

“I don’t want to use them in the Arena,” Yuri mumbles, nearly under his breath. “It was. I had to get close. I could imagine faces—” he stops. Takes a breath. Takes another. He’s finally realizing that wearing his emotions on his sleeve is going to be a detriment. “I don’t want to.”

“You can use whatever you want or come across as a weapon,” Victor says, his chest aching. He ignores the sensation; sentiment is useless at this stage in the game. “It’s a mistake to try and get anything from the Cornucopia anyway, remember? Forget the claws.”

Yuri’s face is back to impassive and blank when he finally raises his head. “Okay.”

When they finish the day, and Mila comes limping back into the living room to fling herself into a chair, Victor is reasonably confident that Yuri won’t crack on camera. He’s also reasonably confident that, given the chance, Yuri would gladly put a knife between his ribs.

“People in the Capitol have more tolerance for pain than I thought,” Mila says. Her bare feet are dangling over one arm of the chair, like she can’t even bear to put them on the floor. “Those shoes are murder.”

“You could probably murder someone with the heels, at least,” Victor says. “Has Georgi come out of his room yet?”

“Right here,” Georgi says, sitting down at the table. His face is clean of makeup, which probably ran terribly when Yuri made him cry. Chris, who went to fetch him from his room, gives Mila an exaggerated kiss on either cheek.

“You were wonderful today. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning to get you dressed.” He turns and winks at Victor. “Be good.”

“I always am,” Victor says, amused. Beside him, Yuri chokes on a sip of water.

Dinner is uncomfortable and nearly silent. Georgi forces conversation after a little while, asking Mila how her afternoon with Chris went.

“I can walk, so I won’t fall on my face,” Mila says. She reaches down to rub her ankle. “I feel like I should get a day of rest between having to wear those things for the interview and having to run for my life.”

“I can talk to Chris about the shoes, if you really think it’s going to—”

“Don’t,” Mila interrupts. Her face is perfect, a mask of Capitol cheerfulness. “From what Chris says, the dress is the perfect length with them and won’t work at all without them. We have to make some sacrifices for fashion!”

Victor tells himself it’s for the best if she keeps it up until after the interviews, so she can stay in practice. Yuri doesn’t say a word, methodically eating until he pushes his plate away, gets up, and leaves the living room.

“I shouldn’t have said what I said,” Mila sighs. “About it being day after tomorrow.”

“He’s going in whether he’s ready or not,” Victor says. He sets down his glass of water and exchanges it for wine. One more day, and they won’t even be his tomorrow. It’ll be makeup and fitting and altering until it’s showtime, and then in the evening it’ll be watching replays before he sends them to bed.

Mila doesn’t answer him. Her eyes are on the windows, and on the Capitol stretched out beyond them.

 _Is she ready?_ Victor wonders. Is anyone ready to go into the Arena knowing they won’t leave it? Victor remembers that feeling from the Quell, two years ago. He’d stared his mortality in the face and accepted it. Was that what Mila was doing now?

Victor lived. He hadn’t meant to. He thinks, if the same thing happens to Mila, she’ll probably handle it better than he did. He thinks it might make him some kind of a monster that he hopes it’ll be Yuri who wins anyway.

“I’m going to sleep,” Mila says at last, tearing her gaze away from the windows. Georgi, who’d been as silent as she was, wishes her a soft goodnight.

“Cheer up, Georgi,” Victor says, as her door clicks shut behind her. “This kind of mood isn’t like you. What did Yuri say to you to put you this out of sorts?”

Georgi’s lip trembles, and for a moment Victor regrets asking, thinking he's going to cry again. He looks so different like this, with his makeup washed off and without the gel stiffening his hair.

“I was only trying to help.” Georgi manages to keep his melodrama under control, swallowing theatrically. “He wasn’t listening to Lilia. I was trying to tell him that sponsors would be looking at his interviews to see how he carried himself, and he asked me how he knew I wasn’t sabotaging him, since Mila was obviously my favorite. And I couldn’t stay in there and listen to him accuse me of that when— when she’s going to—”

Georgi’s face screws up, now, and all his impressive self-control crumbles into more weeping. He reaches out for Victor, who sighs, getting up from his chair to squash into Georgi’s with him, putting his arm around Georgi’s shoulder. It’s only Georgi’s fourth year doing this, and he’s one of the younger escorts. He’s still getting attached.

“Georgi,” Victor sighs. He can’t quite bring himself to coddle Georgi. He still doesn’t understand, not even if it makes him upset to lose a tribute. There’s no difference to him whether it’s someone he knows dying of old age or Mila, barely more than a child, being sent to her death in the Arena. They’re both forces of nature to him. He doesn’t see the wrongness and the rot of it, and it makes Victor impatient.

“Go to bed, Georgi,” he says, coaxing Georgi out of the chair. “Big day tomorrow.”

Georgi sniffles instead of answering, but thankfully he does shuffle off to bed. Victor, left alone in the quiet living room, curls up in the oversized chair Georgi left. It’s warm and plush, and he thinks he can fall asleep here. Maybe, if he dozes in the chair instead of going to his bed, he won’t dream.

He wakes with a crick in his neck, but no memories chase him up from the darkness. It was the ding of the elevator that pulled him out of sleep. Lilia steps off, along with Yuri’s prep team, a garment bag, and a large, silver case on wheels.

“Coffee, Nikiforov,” is all Lilia says before she and the prep team select one of the two prep suites. She leaves the door ajar for Yuri.

Victor sits up, his muscles stiff from sleeping folded up in a position he shouldn’t be trying at his age. Breakfast is already on the table, and a feeling like a small, cold stone sinks into the pit of his stomach. The Avoxes had been moving around him while he was asleep, and he hadn’t even noticed.

He goes to knock on Yuri and Mila’s doors. They don’t stir until Georgi comes bursting from his room and goes to fling both of the doors open.

“Get up! Eat! We don’t have time for the two of you to sleep in!”

It’s like the turmoil of the night before is completely gone from him. He’s in something green and turquoise today, still favoring that gaudy, sheer dagging that’s in style this season. It floats from his hem and collar on this outfit. He’s done his eyes to match, with the same feathery lashes Gaius Fairbrand spotted at the opening reception, only in green.

Yuri and Mila stagger out of their rooms, sleepy-eyed. Yuri doesn’t even have the energy to glare. Victor wonders if they slept well, or at all. His own restful sleep, sore as it made his shoulders, has done good things for his spirits. He feels like the last few days have been spent in a haze, and now that it’s almost on them, he can nearly breathe.

Yuri and Mila will have the hardest job from here. Victor will be safe, in a room full of screens and frantic people, watching the betting counters, the coverage, and the commentary. He’ll be travelling around the Capitol to viewing parties and receptions, being wined and dined and wooing sponsors. They’ll be fighting for their lives.

This is a different kind of fighting. Victor has learned how to fight down his hatred, wrestle it under control and secure it behind a smile pinned to his lips. Yuri and Mila had only a few days to learn the art, and Yuri is barely competent. Mila will do better.

Chris, with Mila’s style team, arrives as they’re finishing off their breakfast. He kisses Victor on both cheeks, then Mila. He turns and raises an eyebrow to Yuri, who stares him down silently. Chris is dressed conservatively for the day, since he will be spending most of it pinning and draping. His bodysuit is black, with the suggestion of a jacket in the cut of its top. The fabric still shimmers, catching the light and throwing it back in purples and reds. He’s done his hair to match, colored tips on the blond.

“Come on, we have a busy day with a lot of work ahead of us,” Chris says. He’s not usually so brisque, so the look must be fairly involved. 

Mila gets up. Before she leaves the room, she turns to look at Yuri.

“You’ll have plenty of chances to fight tomorrow,” she says. “Don’t fight it now.”

Yuri’s head jerks up and around like she slapped him. She doesn’t wait to hear his reply. She and Chris disappear into the small suite of prep rooms set aside for the female tribute from Ten.

“She’s right—”

“We have a deal,” Yuri says. He doesn’t look at Victor.

Victor doesn’t answer, which is as good as an acknowledgement. Yuri gets up from the couch and goes into the other prep room, shutting the door behind him.

Victor turns on the television.

They don’t give the tributes access to the wider network here in the Tower. Victor doesn’t even have access to it; he receives official government information, everything that can be released to the tributes without giving one of them a fair advantage over the others. That includes carefully selected broadcasts with the approved talking heads, who go over only the officially known information from a thousand different angles.

Victor won’t have access to the rest of the media until after the Games begin. All he has now is rumor from among the mentors, the few bits Chris has told him, and speculation. He pours himself a cup of coffee, remembering Lilia’s curt instruction. He’s still sleeping in his clothes from yesterday. It’ll take the teams the better part of the day to get his tributes ready for camera. He has some time.

He turns the shower onto a massage setting and programs aromatherapy for the stress he feels building in the pit of his stomach. He’s been doing this long enough to know that the interview phase is the biggest wildcard before the Games start. Even a well-behaved tribute can have a meltdown on camera. The mentors try to keep it from happening, of course, but sometimes a tribute does something they don’t expect.

He hopes neither of his do anything stupid.

It’s tempting to spend the day drinking so his nerves are pleasantly numbed by the time he has to take the stage, but it isn’t a good idea. He abstains, drinking light fruit juice instead. He’s in a dressing gown, his suit hanging near the door. He’ll wait until Yuri and Mila are ready before he gets dressed to leave with them; he’ll be sitting on that stage for some time, and he doesn’t want to ruin the line of his suit.

Lilia calls for lunch to be delivered in the suite, but Chris lets Mila escape for long enough to bolt something down. He has her makeup done. Her eyeliner is thick and black, tapering out to points that make her eyes look bigger. The mascara has deep red flecks in it that catch the light. Her eyeshadow has been done with a heavy hand, like the liner; it’s a bright bronze over her eyelids and shades into copper as it reaches the crease and the outside of her eye. Her skin has been buffed to flawlessness, but left without the body glitter Chris has favored in some previous years.

“So far so good,” Victor tells her, smiling.

“I can’t touch my eyes and they itch so bad I want to pull all my eyelashes off,” Mila says, with an equally bright smile. It startles Victor into laughing.

“Ask Georgi what he does to keep from yanking his eyelashes off his face.”

“I don’t think Georgi would even notice if it itched. All for the sake of fashion.” Mila finishes her sandwich, drains a glass of water and leaves her lipstick smudged on the rim, then goes back into the prep room.

Victor won’t have much time to talk to them before they leave for the stage. Yesterday’s lessons seem to be sticking with Mila. He isn’t sure what to think about the fact that Lilia didn’t want to let Yuri go, even if it was only to have lunch.

Georgi is ready right before lunch. He’s chosen one of his less ostentatious ensembles, presumably not to outshine his tributes. His makeup is even on the subtle side, a paler color than his preferred bold purples and blacks.

“How are they doing?” he asks, taking a seat.

“Mila’s makeup looks wonderful. I haven’t seen Yuri.”

“Well, hopefully Lilia hasn’t drowned him in the bathtub,” Georgi says, his voice light. He settles in to watch the commentators and picks at a plate of quarter sandwiches.

He makes it another hour without pacing. He tugs at the sleeves of the dressing robe absently, crumples it in his hands over the chest. It’s a habit he’s had since he was young. The clothes, the styles—all of it is another form of leash on his behavior. Wrinkling it is a pointless protest, but it’s one that makes him feel the tiniest bit better. He’s learned to curb it, when it’s important. Georgi ignores him, used to his nervous habits by now.

Yuri comes out of the suite first, with Lilia’s hand on his elbow, marching him like she’s afraid he’ll run away. The suit is white, with a slim cut jacket that’s tailored to hug Yuri’s narrow waist. When he moves, though, Victor can see that the fabric isn’t solid white. There are muted grey stripes that flash silver when the light hits them just so. The thin lapel is lined with white fur that looks downy soft even from a distance. It’s a perfectly neat suit, if an unorthodox fabric choice, but on his hands are the gloves from the tribute parade. They’re made of hardened leather, Victor can see now that he’s close. His first thought is that they probably feel similar to the weapon Yuri swore he wouldn’t use in the arena.

Yuri’s hair is braided back along his temples, away from his face. He’s wearing makeup, but it’s not the stripes painted on his skin that Lilia gave him for the parade, but an understated look for the camera, foundation, barely any liner, a matte, flesh-toned lipstick. Enough to make sure he doesn’t get lost under the lights. The lack of makeup is made up for by the cat-slitted contacts. It’s a study in contradictions; the suit is a traditional cut, but with the exotic mix of fabrics, and the gloves like weapons are the opposite of the civilized lines of his jacket. His styling, the hair and the makeup, suggest a clean innocence, but the contacts give him the eyes of a predator. It’s a choice that will reinforce the softness Victor has asked of him today, while reminding the Capitol that he’s a real contender. It’s masterful. 

“Oh, Yuri!” Georgi says, jumping up from the chair and clasping his hands to his chest. “You look so handsome! Stunning!”

Mila emerges before Yuri can say anything to in response, thankfully. Victor’s first, impressed thought is that both his stylists have outdone themselves this year. Mila’s dress is a deep russet red that flames copper when she moves. The fabric is a rich velvet, the dress hugging her body until mid-thigh, where the skirt fans out around her feet. It leaves her legs bare down to the shoes. The heels are less punishing than they were in the chariot, but they still give the already tall Mila some additional inches in height. The claws on the toe of the shoe, and the elbow-length, black clawed gloves, already add something feral to the appearance even before the fur.

The dress has a high neckline; Chris hasn’t done anything tasteless like put her cleavage on display. He might wear shirts cut down to the navel himself, but that’s not Mila. Instead, the dress encircles her throat like a choker, and from the neck and shoulders sprouts a long-furred ruff that frames her face. The fur is a creamy white, a break from all the deep reds and blacks of the rest of it, and reflecting the satiny white lining Victor can spot on the inside of the dress’s train. She holds her chin high, and her red hair frames her face in loose waves. When she walks, she practically glides on the heels, and Victor gives her a proud smile.

“You look fantastic,” he says. “Both of you.”

“The gloves make my hands sweat,” Yuri complains.

“You too?” Mila asks, nudging him.

Victor excuses himself to change into his suit. He doesn’t take long, and then they’re taking the elevator down to the lobby. The style teams will follow them down; when they exit to the cameras, it will be Yuri and Mila first, with Chris and Lilia behind, Georgi and Victor bringing up the rear.

“Remember what I said to you yesterday,” Victor says. He’s barely spoken a word to either of them all day. He doesn’t like feeling nervous, and the fact that Yuri is ignoring him, staring stone-facedly at the doors to the elevators, is making him nervous. “Remember who to be onstage. Don’t give them everything, don’t hold back everything either.”

“We know, Victor,” Mila says. She’s nothing but poise and resolve. Now that she’s standing in front of him, Victor can see the low plunge of the back of her dress. It exposes her pale skin, the straight line of her spine, and the muscle definition of her shoulders.

“You’re both so beautiful,” Georgi says, his voice a little tremulous. He dabs at his eyes. “Chris, Lilia, you have truly outdone yourselves.”

“Georgi, darling, don’t cry,” Chris says, squeezing past Victor so he can take Georgi’s handkerchief and carefully dry the corners of his eyes. “Your eyeshadow is so perfectly blended, you’ll smudge it.”

Victor sees Mila and Yuri exchange a flat, wordless glance. They keep it off their faces, but Victor bites the inside of his cheek because he knows that emotion. Capitol people. As much as he loves Chris and Georgi, they’re Capitol through and through.

The elevator door slide open, and the tributes are whisked away from him to stand in line. Mila doesn’t look back, but Yuri does, his green eyes seeking Victor’s as he’s led away. Victor doesn’t smile. His smiles are for the camera. Instead he gives Yuri a slow, grave nod.

It’s like Yuri doesn’t even realize what he’s doing. A scowl starts to take over his face before he remembers to keep his expression impassive, and he whips his head around, following the staff to his place in line with the other tributes. Victor and the rest are led to their seats. The tributes will be fanned out behind the two chairs at center stage, where Phichit will interview them one by one for Panem’s eager crowds.

Their mentors, stylists, and prep teams are taken one of the two sets of risers on either side of the stage, where they can watch from up close. He’s lucky, this year; he’s seated on the side where he can see their faces as they’re being interviewed. He won’t have to rely on the huge screen hovering above their heads.

Victor doesn’t have to wait long for Phichit to bounce onto the stage. His suit for the interviews is a color-swapped version of his suit from the tribute parade. Before, it had been red with gold accents. Now, it’s a brilliant gold cloth that flashes under the stage lights, with glittering red flame embroidery licking up the leg of Phichit’s suit pants and across the back of his jacket. Phichit’s smile for the camera is easy and natural, and he gets the crowd enthusiastic very quickly.

“You saw them in the tribute parade, but are you ready to _really_ meet your tributes for the 77th Hunger Games?” Phichit asks, and the crowd roars. Victor thinks it sounds like a ravenous beast, some kind of many-headed monster.

“I don’t think you’re ready!” Phichit taunts, laughing into his microphone. He’s getting them fired up this year. There are a lot of promising tributes, a couple of heart-wrenching stories, and at least one big mystery. It’s a good year for Phichit’s kind of showmanship.

Finally, they let the tributes onstage. Victor’s eyes glide over the rest and stay glued to Yuri and Mila. He has to keep his camera face on for the entirety of the interview segment. The camera will pan over them occasionally, and Victor has learned that it doesn’t matter where he’s sitting; the camera will pick him out of the crowd with uncanny accuracy. He’s never dyed his hair, but sometimes the scrutiny makes him want to.

Mila strides surely across the stage, even with the heels. The train of her gown sweeps the stage behind her, the fur around her neck ruffling in the breeze. When she turns to sit, Victor knows immediately that Chris taught her this motion, turning so the train of the dress drapes to one side of the seat, leaving the long line of her calf bare and ensuring she won’t step on it when she rises.

Yuri, following her, has equally neat posture. He walks like Victor knows Lilia must have taught him, like there’s an invisible steel rod through his spine. The silver stripes on the suit glimmer under the stage lights, making him impossible to lose among the rest of the tributes. When all of them are in position and they sit down, he spots Yuri undoing the button of his suit jacket. It’s perfect. Victor hopes he remembers to button it again when it’s his turn.

As always, the districts go in order, girls before the boys. District One’s tributes barely grab his interest. The girl is like Isabella, answering Phichit’s questions with an assured, haughty air. The careers are always the same. The boy is nearly a carbon copy of JJ, and any second Victor is expecting him to flash the _JJ Style!_ hand sign. He doesn’t. Victor applauds with the rest of the crowd as he goes back to his seat. Phichit introduces the girl from District Two, and so it goes.

Victor watches the monitors as the camera slowly pans around the stage, focusing on the tributes as they listen to each other speak. Whenever he spots Yuri and Mila, another tremor of unease runs through him. Their expressions are composed, even though tremors of a frown keep curving Yuri’s lips and Mila’s eyes tighten whenever one of the tributes talks about their home district or their family.

The wait seems interminable. One part of Victor’s mind catalogues the other tributes, filing away interesting facts about them or weaknesses he might be able to pass along to his tributes in the scant time they have left. By now, it’s obvious to him who the front-runners are. The Careers, from districts One, Two, and Four, are always threats. The girl from District Five. The boy from District Six. The two from District Seven. Before he knows it, it’s Mila’s turn.

The crowd roars when her name is called. The lights on stage dim, and the footage of her reaping looms on the big screen. Victor wasn’t looking for it when he was standing onstage beside Georgi, but now he sees her eyes seek out Yuri as soon as her name is called. The camera doesn’t pan over to Yuri in the crowd, and the footage ends before he can volunteer. Mila rises smoothly from her chair and walks forward to shake Phichit’s hand, smiling flawlessly. She repeats the turnaround maneuver when she sits, the train of her dress spreading out on the stage like a pile of russet and white fur.

“Mila Babicheva,” Phichit says. “Is it alright if I call you Mila?”

“Please,” Mila says.

“Mila, a little bird told me it’s your birthday today, is that right?” Phichit looks absolutely delighted, and Victor is glad he worked with her on this one.

“That’s right, I’m nineteen today.” She holds the smile and nods at the crowd when shouts of _Happy birthday, Mila_ reach them from the people watching below. Phichit springs up from his chair and leads the crowd and the risers on a quick rendition of a happy birthday song, which he winds down rapidly into a question. He has limited time with all the tributes, after all.

“I’m sure anyone who was watching that footage from your reaping wants to know,” he says, and Victor braces himself, “who was it you were looking for in the crowd? Friend? _Boyfriend?_ ”

“I threw my last boyfriend into a hay bale,” she says, and the crowd hoots along with her in delight. It’s going beautifully. “No, I was looking for Yuri.”

“Your fellow tribute from District Ten! Why would you be looking for him?”

“Because I knew he would volunteer. He’s talked about it since he was twelve, volunteering at fifteen if he hasn’t been chosen before then. See,” she says, leaning forward like she’s telling a secret, “he wants to be the youngest in our district to win it.”

“The record holder for that right now, of course, being your mentor Victor Nikiforov.” Phichit turns in his seat, looking toward Victor in the risers. Victor knows the camera is on him, so he gives his best rueful media smile. “You say he talked to you about this. Does that mean you’re friends?”

The Capitol loves a good alliance. The inevitable collapse of those alliances with the one-winner-only rule keeps them on the edges of their seats.

“Yuri is like a little brother to me. We’ve known each other almost all our lives. I taught him how to ride a horse and how to rope a calf.” Victor didn’t teach Mila how to tinge her smile with a touch of sadness, how to look like she’s putting her emotions on display for the camera’s pleasure, but she does it with ease. “Yeah, I guess you can say we’re friends.”

“How did it make you feel, when he volunteered?” Phichit asked, leaning forward.

They practiced this line yesterday. Mila knows what she’s supposed to do. The slit-eyed contacts make her look fiercer when she lets her eyes narrow.

“I was furious with him,” she says. The crowd is reacting with murmurs and breathless anticipation. The camera flashes to Yuri’s face. He’s failing to conceal his surprise, and Victor can’t blame him. This is what he wants. Yuri will be on the defensive when he sits down in that chair, and he won’t be able to hide everything, but he’ll try. Victor knows how to sell a tribute to a sponsor, and he knows that conflict, complication, and the kind of steel resolve Yuri can show are things that sell best of all.

“Oh, wow! Talk about drama!” Phichit sounds delighted, giving the camera a sidelong look and covering a theatrical gasp with the hand not holding the microphone. “You’ve been training with him since you arrived in the Capitol, though. Gossip has it you’re still awfully friendly.”

“I said he’s like my little brother. I can’t stay mad at him for long.” Mila spreads her hands, the clawed gloves making even that gesture look sharp and dangerous.

The crowd awws. Victor smiles fondly at her, not caring if the camera catches him at it. She’s doing so beautifully. He freezes the fond expression on his face before it can crack into something else.

“If you win,” says Phichit, “what’s the first thing you’re going to do?”

Mila gives the zoo line, smiling brightly, and the buzzer goes off. Phichit jumps to his feet, offering his hand to help her rise. The crowd is applauding. They love her.

Yuri’s face looks pale under the lights, the silvery makeup framing his eyes shimmering. His tie, green and silky, pops against the pale shirt and suit. Victor can see his throat move as he swallows.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be watching Mila the Fox, isn’t that right?” Phichit asks, and the crowd graces her with another round of applause. Phichit waves them down, turning back to the semicircle of seated tributes. “Next up, an interview I know I’ve been waiting for, the surprise high score, Yuri Plisetsky, Tiger of District Ten!”

The footage plays. It picks up with Georgi fishing in the bowl for the name of a male tribute, and then Yuri’s voice, strident across the crowd.

“I volunteer as tribute!”

Victor studies his face on the screen. His green eyes are wide and wild, like he can’t believe he’s doing it even as he’s doing it. He has his hand straight in the air, stretching almost on his toes to be sure he’s seen.

The image fades, and Phichit beckons to the real Yuri to join him at center stage.

Yuri stands from his seat, smiling. He buttons his suit jacket and goes to shake Phichit’s hand. Victor feels someone take his hand and glances to his left. Georgi has Victor’s left hand firmly in his.

“You were gripping,” he says, his voice barely loud enough to be heard in Victor’s ear over the applause. “Should we be nervous?”

Georgi can pick the strangest times to pick up on what’s going on around him. Victor slowly releases the death grip he has on the right arm of his chair and lets Georgi squeeze his left hand, reminding him to stay relaxed.

Yuri takes his seat, unbuttoning his suit again. Lilia, on Georgi’s other side, smiles smugly. Victor gathers the suit jacket was likely one of the things they argued about yesterday. Victor had never seen the point in it either, buttoning when you stand, unbuttoning when you sit. He remembers protesting, back when Lilia was his stylist.

“Yuri,” Phichit says warmly. “We just heard from your good friend Mila about your plans to be the youngest victor in your district. Tell me about that.”

Despite Victor's coaching, despite all the tributes that have come out before him and done their interviews, Yuri still stares at Phichit as if he's trying to figure out where he gets the audacity.

“Please don't,” Victor mutters. Georgi has his arm in a grip that's going to damage his nerves.

Yuri swallows. His smile is tight, but it’s there. Victor hopes Phichit will try to set him at ease, instead of try to wind him up.

“I’ve been watching my grandfather provide for me all my life,” he says. His back is straight, his voice clear. He looks determined. “I always knew the only way to repay him for everything he’s done was to win the Games, so he can retire and have the best life I can give him. So I told myself, if I wasn’t chosen, I’d volunteer.”

“Why set the goal at fifteen? You still have three more years of eligibility!”

It takes Yuri a breath longer than Victor likes to answer that question. Phichit doesn’t know about the horror of waiting for the reaping every year, the faint relief when your name isn’t chosen or the gut-wrenching feeling when someone you care about is called instead.

“I love my grandfather. He’s becoming an old man, he can’t provide for us like he used to. I have to do it now.” Yuri’s smile is gone, but Victor doesn’t care. This is honest Yuri, the Yuri he desperately hoped he would see today. 

“I bet you're a handful for him back home,” Phichit says, grinning. “The attitude on your face during the parade, me-yow! Were you surprised at the reaction?”

“I wasn't sure what to think about the whole thing,” Yuri admits. “I've never worn makeup before.”

“How do you like it? You look great, by the way, I'm loving this suit.”

“It's weird. I look in the mirror and I don't quite recognize myself.”

Phichit laughs. “That's how I feel when I wake up and don't have my face on yet! Like, don't look at me!” He shields himself exaggeratedly from the camera. Yuri cracks an unwilling smile. Victor relaxes. It's not going as bad as he feared.

“You're pretty confident,” Phichit says, bringing it back to the Games. “Are you worried about anything? Nervous?”

Yuri hesitates. Victor holds his breath. He told Yuri to be honest, because it plays better for the camera and Yuri is a bad liar, but he doesn't know what Yuri will say here.

“It's going to sound stupid, because I've been thinking about volunteering for so long and I always wanted to win the Games.”

“I'm sure it's not stupid,” Phichit says, patting his hand in reassurance. “You can tell me.” Somehow, even though they're surrounded by cameras and a live audience, he makes it seem like it'll be a secret between the two of them.

“I don't want to kill anyone,” Yuri says. It's soft, the kind of confession Victor knows he's never admitted out loud to anyone. “I don't want to. But I have to, right? So I guess if I'm nervous about anything, it's that.”

Phichit is, for once, at a loss for words. There’s a noise from the crowd, a combination of an _aw_ of sympathy and a buzz of whispers. Victor grits his teeth. Yuri has undermined his fierce tiger image, but at the same time, he's breaking the Capitol’s heart.

There's nothing Phichit can say to make that better. He can't tell Yuri it'll be okay, and he can't tell Yuri he's sorry. Victor sees his eyes flick to the crowd, taking the tenor.

“Are you happy to have a friend in there with you, or are you afraid of what might happen if you're the only two left?”

It's cruel, even for Phichit, who says cruel things when it's at his advantage with the crowd. There's a collective gasp from the audience that he'd dare ask the question they're all thinking.

“I don't know,” Yuri says, looking a little lost. “I've been trying not to think about it, to tell the truth.”

The buzzer goes off, and Yuri jumps up from the chair a little too fast, buttoning his suit jacket with one hand and shaking Phichit’s hand with the other. He strides back to his seat, looking like he might collapse into it, but he remembers his suit and sits neatly, like he’s been taught. He looks dazed. The seats are too far away from each other for Mila to touch him, but after a brief flick of her blue eyes toward where Phichit is talking, Mila puts her fingers to her lips and whistles.

It’s a little too loud. Phichit hesitates in the middle of a word, and half-turns to see what the noise was. Yuri’s head jerks around to look at Mila, who reaches out across the space between them. Yuri glances at the risers for a split second, but there’s no way he can be waiting for Victor’s answer before he reaches across the gap, too far away to do more than barely brush their fingers together.

There’s another spontaneous cheer from the crowd, and Victor feels his chest loosen enough to take a long, relieved breath. He has them. Mila and Yuri were devastating out there, and he has them.

Victor watches the interviews for the twins from District Eleven with more interest than the previous tributes, now that he isn’t sweating in anticipation of District Ten’s turn. The girl, Sara, goes first. She’s wearing a beautiful summery dress, layers on layers of white and yellow gauze that cling to her torso and flare out over her hips. Her hair is done up in a neat bun and strewn with flowers.

Phichit asks her about her brother. Sara is as talented at working the camera as Mila is, her eyes attractively misty but not spilling over enough to ruin her makeup as she speaks about her inseparable bond with her brother, and the audience laps it up as much as they did the dynamic between Mila and Yuri. There are some interesting relationships on the stage this year, and it’s skewing the betting toward the lower districts for the first time since the Quarter Quell.

Watching, her, though, Victor doesn’t see the underlying steel she would need to win. When Phichit finishes with her and it’s her brother Michele’s turn in the hot seat, his suspicions are confirmed. They’re here for each other, and they’re a threat only insofar as they’ll pull sponsorship interest for their heart-wrenching story. Michele is insistent that he’ll protect Sara in the Arena, which means the rest of the tributes now know which of the pair to target. Victor wonders whether Aiglentine and Seung-gil are pulling their hair out, or whether they’ve already accepted defeat.

District Twelve is next. The crowd gets restless when the frail girl who scored a three is interviewed. Nobody expects her to last more than five minutes, so Phichit doesn’t ask about the Games, or her training, or strategy. He asks about her family, her illness, what she misses from home and what she’s glad to have seen in the Capitol. The watching crowd seems to find it heartbreaking. Victor wonders if it was growing up in District Ten and watching people die of starvation and sickness, or whether it was the Arena that made him this way; he doesn’t feel moved by her plight or her looming death. He doesn’t feel much of anything at all.

Then it’s Minami Kenjirou’s turn, and Victor leans forward to pay attention.

He’s energetic, working the crowd with a snaggle-toothed grin and a boisterous personality. He waves with both hands when he jumps up from his seat, nearly bouncing over to Phichit. The blond hair with its red streak is still eye-catching, and Victor knows it’ll be just as eye-catching in the Arena. He almost misses what Minami says next, pondering how that flame-colored hair will make him stand out, but Victor couldn’t ignore the name that falls from Minami’s lips if he tried.

“I looked up to Yuuri Katsuki most of my life,” Minami is saying. “Twelve hadn’t had a victor in decades before he won. I remember he used to come down from Victor’s Village to talk to people, like he was anyone else. I only met him once, but I’ll never forget him.”

“It must have been hard to lose someone you looked up to so much,” Phichit says.

Victor’s ears feel like they’re ringing. Beside him, Georgi has his hand in a death grip again. He can see Chris looking at him out of the corner of his eye. He can’t move. He can’t even make himself blink.

“It was.” Minami’s voice is so quiet, so sincere. “That’s why I’m going to win. To honor his memory. He should have won the Quell, you now.”

Victor wants to say, _I know._ He wants to say, _I tried, I tried so hard._ He wants to ask Minami to forgive him, because nobody has ever let him apologize for what happened in the Quell, they all insisted he didn’t need to. It wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t have done anything. He does, it was, he could have. He wishes he could say all of those things to Minami, but he can’t, he can’t utter a word. He lets the smile fall off his face because he knows how much the Capitol loves this story, this tragedy Victor can’t let go of, but he doesn’t say any of the things screaming through his mind.

It’s over before he realizes it, Phichit shaking Minami’s hand and having all the tributes rise to take a bow. Victor hears it again, the phantom echo of the terrible cry that escaped him in the Arena, ringing in his ears like a the lost wail of a ghost.

“Victor, it’s time for us to clear the stage.”

Lilia’s voice does what Georgi and Chris couldn’t. It gets him moving, walking in the direction of the stairs on the side of the stage. The stagehands and crew take charge of them immediately, shepherding them out of the way as they start to break the stage down. Now that the Games are about to begin, there’s no need to keep the monstrosity in front of Tribute Tower.

Victor doesn’t remember what he says to Yuri or Mila in the elevator. He thinks he gave them some encouragement, probably told them they did a good job, but he feels like he’s in a haze. He can’t shake the memories, like the dream from the other night pulled them back to the forefront of his mind, and hearing Minami onstage was the breaking point to his wall of resolve.

He’s standing at the windows, watching the bustle below as the stage is broken down. It’s an easy thing to use to occupy his mind. He doesn’t have to worry about his tributes, for now, since they’re both busy scrubbing off makeup and body glitter and rinsing out hairspray.

Chris appears at his elbow, pressing a drink into his hand. 

“Thanks.” Victor takes it, drinks half of it before he realizes it’s vodka, neat, strong enough to burn his throat all the way down. Chris steps a little bit closer, slipping his arm around Victor’s waist and squeezing a little, a one-sided hug that Victor can’t bring himself to return.

“Look at them go,” he says, following the line of Victor’s gaze down to the stage. “You know, stagehands and mentors actually have a lot in common. There’s so much you do behind the scenes that nobody watching will ever know.”

“Don’t say you’re proud of me,” Victor says, unspeakably tired.

“You’re doing a great job.” Chris gives him an affectionate little peck on the cheek. “Get through the Games, then you get to sleep while the victor recovers. Do you want to go to bed early? The three of us can watch the replays with the tributes.”

“No.” Victor’s answer is immediate. This is the last time he’ll see them before they go inside. The last time he’ll see Mila at all, maybe the last time he’ll see Yuri. He isn’t going to hide in his room from them. “I just need a minute to get my head together.”

“Make sure you eat,” Chris says, because he knows Victor too well.

He does eat. Yuri is finished washing up first and comes out in his loose pajamas, barefoot. He sits on the floor, leaning back against the table, and nobody says anything to him about it when he leans up, piles a plate high, and eats with it balanced on his knees. Georgi looks like he wants to for only a moment, but he subsides.

The Capitol anthem is playing before Mila is done, and she still has some smudges of the dark black eyeliner clinging to the corners of her eyes.

“You never said you were angry with me,” Yuri says around a mouthful of warm, fluffy bread. Mila, picking at an orange like she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do with it, shrugs.

“It doesn’t matter now.” She’s drinking wine, Victor notices.

“No more than one glass of that,” he tells her. “You want to have a clear head.”

“Yeah,” Mila murmurs into her glass, then takes a larger gulp than Victor would have recommended. She only coughs a little.

“The Careers are all the same, they’re nothing but big goons,” Yuri is saying, his attention back on the broadcast. “Think they’re smart enough to be dangerous?”

Mila narrows her eyes at the girl from District Two. She has a predator’s smile, a keen look in her eye. Her stylists have her in a dress of with a structured, geometric shoulder pad that looks like an angular flower. It reflects the light oddly onto her face, making her cheekbones look more sharp.

“That one is,” she says. “The way she talks. She’s pretty good at being fake, but it’s still fake. She doesn’t feel anything she’s saying.”

“Doesn’t mean she’s smart, just creepy,” Yuri says.

“She’s one to watch out for.”

“Nothing special from Three.” Yuri is tearing through his food like he’s on a mission, single-mindedly focused on the broadcast. “Smart, but neither one of them got a good score.”

“Strength isn’t everything,” Victor puts in. “Their skill could be traps, or stealth, neither of which usually play well for the Gamemakers.”

“He’s terrified,” Mila observes of the boy from Three. “He’s shaking in the seat and barely hiding it.”

“Not everyone can be like the pair of you,” Victor murmurs, remembering a stuttering interview from a tribute wearing glasses, with warm eyes and black hair that fell haphazardly across his forehead.

They continue to discuss the other tributes as they eat, trying to decide which ones are threats and which ones aren’t going to last long. It’s callous. Victor doesn’t want to approve, but he does. This kind of thinking is what will help them survive.

“He’s nothing,” Yuri is saying when Victor tunes back in. “He’s like a dopey cow.”

Victor looks at the tribute they’re talking about. It’s Leo, the boy from Seven.

“He has a good score,” Mila points out. “He might be weird on camera. You never know, right?”

Yuri grunts, stabbing another piece of chicken glazed in enough sweet syrup to coat the tongue. Victor doesn’t care for that particular preparation, but Yuri can’t seem to get enough of it.

Soon enough, Mila is watching herself stand and walk to Phichit.

“You did beautifully,” Chris says. “Look at how you glide. It’s just like we practiced.”

Mila does glide, the train of her dress sliding across the stage behind her. The camera loves the way it shifts color as she moves, the way the fur ruffles in the slightest breeze. The metallic shadow on her eyes makes the blue seem even stronger, and the cat-slit contacts combine with Chris’s talent for shaping to create the illusion that her face is longer than it is.

“I don’t look human,” Mila says softly.

“Mila the Fox!” Georgi says, enthusiastic. “Victor, let her have one more glass of wine to toast with. Surely you’ve learned to drink with us by now.”

“I think I’ll stay with one.” Mila sets her wine glass down on the table. She has her press face on, the polite, blank mask Victor spent most of yesterday drilling into her.

“You’re probably right,” Georgi sighs, going from boisterous to morose faster than anyone else Victor knew. “It’s really too bad. You’re stunning on camera. Look at Phichit smile! You can tell when it’s a real one because it makes his eyeliner crinkle, look.”

Georgi’s babble takes the place of Mila and Yuri’s conversation. They both watch their interviews like they’re watching strangers instead of themselves. Victor has lived with that feeling for far too long not to recognize it in someone else.

They linger over dinner. Victor doesn’t want to dismiss them, he realizes, as he loads another small plate with glazed chicken for Yuri, who takes it slowly, like he’s confused by the gesture. He’s been able to protect them, to steer them in the right direction up until now. After this, they’ll be on their own.

He rises with Yuri when he stands. The room gets quiet. They’ve long since turned the screen off, and they’ve been talking about inconsequential things. Now, with Yuri and Victor on their feet, it seems like something needs to be said.

Victor offers Yuri his hand, solemn. Yuri leaves him waiting for a full six seconds before he steps forward to take it. His grip is dry and firm. His green eyes are blazing when they look up at him.

“Water. Food. High ground. Weapons. Don’t forget, the Cornucopia is a death trap. We’ll be watching you. If I send something to you, it’s imperative you get it.” Victor keeps Yuri’s hand as he speaks. He’s done this for years, and he doesn’t know why it feels so much more urgent this time. “Don’t pick a fight you don’t have to. Don’t take a risk if you don’t need to. Surviving is winning.”

“I can do it, old man,” Yuri says, rolling his eyes. He’s being flippant, but he’s pale, and his hand is gripping Victor’s a little bit tighter than it was when they first shook.

“I know you can,” Victor answers. He sees the same fierce, determined look in Yuri’s eyes now that he saw on the train. Yuri can win. He just has to play smart.

“Get some sleep.” He lets Yuri’s hand go and steps back. It feels like a breath has gone out of the room.

Then Georgi comes flying across the living room to throw his arms around Yuri and sob.

“Yuri! I wish we had a hundred more days for me to struggle with the unique challenge of your personality,” Georgi says, which nearly makes Victor crack a smile. It might be the most backhanded compliment he’s ever given a tribute. “You’ve made your District proud!”

Yuri struggles, pushing him away, the whole motion so theatrical that Victor knows he’s not actually trying to shake Georgi off. Now he actually does smile, a little, at the tiniest evidence that Yuri Plisetsky has a heart.

Georgi finally plants a big kiss on Yuri’s forehead, ignoring Yuri’s spitting protests, and propels him off to bed. Yuri stomps past the couch, pausing when he’s a half-stride from Mila. She doesn’t turn to look at him. He continues into his room and shuts the door.

That leaves Mila, who sets her plate aside with a quiet click.

Georgi offers her his hand, even though she’s no longer in heels and can stand perfectly fine on her bare feet. When he goes to hug her, he does it like she’s fragile, barely enfolding her in his arms. Mila doesn’t move at first, then throws her arms around him and squeezes him so hard he squeaks.

“Mila!” he gasps when she sets him down. “You can’t be so rough with me, I’ll have bruises! What if I wanted to wear something that didn’t have sleeves?”

Victor can’t remember the last time it looked like Georgi was trying to keep up an appearance. Usually he lets his emotions do whatever they want, bursting into tears or sweeping people into hugs whenever he feels like he needs to express himself. Now, he’s pretending to be outraged and stopping himself from crying, going on until Mila finally smiles.

“There,” Georgi says, taking her hands. “You’re beautiful when you smile.”

“You look best in blue,” Mila tells him. “Especially with the shimmer shadow. Keep that look.”

“I will.” Georgi can barely speak. He flees into his bedroom without another word.

Chris gets up and murmurs a goodnight, telling Mila he’ll see her in the morning. Lilia gives her a long look up and down and nods decisively.

“If they had let me trade for you, I would have,” Lilia informs her. “Chris got the better deal out of it.”

Then it’s only Victor and Mila.

She goes to the window. He follows. The stage is gone. In its place is the parade route. By now, only the last haggard remnants of the Hunger Games Eve floats are passing under their windows, trailing streamers and confetti. Mila watches the crowd close together in the parade’s wake, a riot of color in the streets. They can’t hear the music from behind the glass, but Victor knows what it sounds like.

“Thank you,” Mila says finally, breaking the silence. “You respected my choice.”

“Mila.” Victor turns away from the glass to look at her, the brave girl with her death in her eyes. He waits for her to turn, too, then pulls her into a hug. He expects her to push him away, but instead she hugs him back, her forehead on his collarbone.

“I don’t think I’m ready,” she says.

“Nobody ever is.” Victor steps back, holding her by the shoulders. “It’s been an honor. You’re the best tribute I’ve ever mentored. If—”

He stops himself, because what he’d been about to say was beyond cruel. If this had been her year, she would have won.

“Victor. Promise me something.”

Victor can’t promise her much, but he’s not going to say no. He nods.

“I’ll take care of him in there. I’ll keep him safe until the end. And once he’s back out, you have to take care of him out here. Promise me.”

Victor has survived the Games twice. Coming out the other side is like dragging yourself over razor wire. If Yuri can survive the Arena, he has a good chance of surviving what comes after. If he has Victor, his chances are even better.

“Of course I will.”

“It’ll mean something if you’re there for him on the other side,” she says, urgent.

“I will be. I promise,” Victor says. It’s hard for him to breathe. He can’t figure out why until he realizes his throat is tight and his eyes are burning. “Go to sleep. You need the rest.”

She leaves him alone in the living room. Victor goes straight to his bathroom and orders a sleep aid. He doesn’t want his dreams tonight.

He wakes up to the sound of movement in the living room, the distant ding of the elevator. Lilia is taking Yuri to the roof, or Chris is taking Mila. Victor rolls out of bed and steps into the shower. He takes his time; he’s going to be making an impression on the Capitol’s rich and famous, today, and he needs to be camera perfect. Without Chris here to help him, since Chris is escorting Mila to the Arena, Victor will have to be extra careful.

Georgi taps on his door while he’s trying to decide between ties. “Come in.”

“Oh, the blue one,” Georgi says immediately, seeing what he’s doing. “It complements your eyes, and we’ll match.”

Georgi is in blue, today, heavily shadowed with black undertones. It looks like something he would wear if he was in mourning. Victor wonders if he should tell him to go change, if it’ll set the wrong tone for any potential sponsors. He decides it’s not worth the hassle. Georgi’s makeup is already done to match, his eyeshadow blended up to his eyebrows. Victor doesn’t want to fight him on it.

He puts on the blue tie and follows Georgi down to the ground floor where their car is waiting.

Games Headquarters is a sprawling building, its marble pillars and white walls scrubbed sparkling before every Games commencement. Victor and Georgi get out of the car amid hundreds of camera flashes. Security lines the red carpet, rolled out from the top of the stairs all the way down to the street. Victor and Georgi have to stop for a truly ridiculous amount of pictures and tiny snatches of interview.

“I think this year is going to be truly exciting,” Georgi says, enthusiastic in a way Victor didn’t expect from him after last night. “There are a lot of very strong contenders, compelling stories. Of course, District Ten will win.”

He says it so assuredly. Victor wishes he had his absolute confidence. He believes in Mila, who has the drive for it, but Yuri worries him. Yuri, who bristles with pricked pride at any suggestion that he might need help, but shies away from real violence, and says he doesn’t want to kill.

Victor remembers the look on his face the night before, the way the blood had drained from his face while his hand shook in Victor’s grip.

He’s terrified for Yuri. The realization hits him as he’s climbing the stairs, his hands in the pockets of his suit jacket, balled into fists. He can’t be terrified for Yuri, he has to be objective. He has to see the big picture, be willing to put him in some danger to save him from bigger danger, if he can.

Finally, they pass into HQ, and the noise of the crowd is cut off.

Each district in HQ is given a media room, staff, and a sleeping area. It’s up to the team to decide when someone leaves to go press for sponsorships, collect funding, and spend it on what they need to send their tribute. Victor knows his way to the District Ten room by heart, and he feels some of his worries subside as he goes through the familiar routine.

It’s built like a small control room, with several screens covering the wall across from the door. Stairs lead down through the stations, where the staff can sit to monitor the tributes’ vital signs, feeds from other districts, the media response to District Ten, and alerts from the Gamemakers. Victor knows this place as well as he knows his home in District Ten.

The staff is already there. There’s an anticipatory charge in the air, like they’re all waiting to breathe. On the screens, the Capitol seal dominates. Victor takes a long, subtle breath, letting it out slowly. They all stand, slowly, as they notice him and Georgi standing in the doorway.

“Good morning,” Victor says, smiling. From now until the Games end, he has to be on. “I’m Victor Nikiforov. It’s going to be an honor working with all of you for the Games.”

They applaud. Victor waits it out. They’re only patting themselves on the back, and he lets them. He drives his staff hard during the Games, and they’re about to find that out.

“If you’ve worked with me before, you know what to expect.” He walks down the stairs, between the long tables and the dozens of screens. “If you haven’t, here’s how it goes. Our tributes are our highest responsibility. One of them is going to win these Games, and nobody in this room is going to take any less than that as an acceptable outcome.”

The celebratory tenor has dissipated. Now, Victor has their undivided attention, every eye on him at the front of the room, standing below the sprawling screen and its enormous Capitol logo.

“I sleep when they sleep. If they’re in danger, I know about it as soon as one of you knows. When another tribute dies, I know how and where. If you think something seems strange, you don’t sit on it and second guess yourself.”

 _They trust me to see them through the other side of this_ , Victor doesn’t say. _They trust me to do what I promised_.

“Georgi or I will be in the room at all times. Usually I will be, but if Georgi is here, report anything you get to him as well.” Victor reminds himself to breathe. It’s like every year. He has two lives in his hands, only one of them can win in the end. The difference is, this time he knows which one it will be.

If it’s either of them at all.

Victor shakes the thought away with a roll of his shoulders, looking over the faces he has on his staff. He recognizes a few from years past, knows he has good people in important positions. What happens behind the scenes of the Games is almost as important to the tributes as their ability to survive in the Arena, and Victor has always supported his tributes well.

“District Ten is going to win this,” he says. He sees some of his staff regulars startle. He’s never said it so decisively before. “This is our strategy. Mila is protecting Yuri, and Yuri will win the Games. They stay together or they won’t survive long, so our first priority is to watch out for anything that might separate them.”

It’s not exactly frowned upon, to favor one tribute over another, but it’s not the most popular strategy either. It’s a mark of how famous Victor is, what a feather in a staff member’s cap it is to work under him, that he doesn’t hear any discontented murmuring.

He hears the anthem start from behind him, and a jolt of energy rolls up his spine. He hasn’t even eaten breakfast yet. He doesn’t know how Georgi isn’t whining and expiring. A quick glance up at the top of the stairs shows that Georgi is staring fixedly at him, his hands clutched to his chest like he’s been moved by Victor’s speech.

Victor smiles.

“Let’s get to work,” he says, and turns to face the screen. Behind him, chairs scrape and chatter resumes. He watches as the Capitol logo fades away into President Snow’s face.

“Citizens of Panem,” he intones. “As your President, it is my pleasure to present to you the Arena for the 77th Annual Hunger Games.”

His face fades, and in its place is a birds-eye view that makes Victor’s chest clench. This isn’t good for District Ten.

The Arena this year is like something out of a history video. It’s an urban center, or it was, a concrete, metal, and glass sprawl that the helpful graphics from the broadcast tell him is three hundred square miles. It would take a tribute an entire day to hike the length.

The streets are cracked, manhole covers standing open like yawning traps. The cameras swoop through the streets, the main screen view breaking into smaller displays. Victor has seen a flyby enough times to know what this is meant to do. They’re fragmenting the city for the mentors, keeping them from getting a full sense of it until the Gamemakers are ready. They always save something for when everyone least expects it.

The disparate camera angles resolve into one view again, a zoomed-out shot of the Cornucopia. It’s placed in what used to be this city’s center, a wide-open circle surrounded by crumbling buildings, with a large fountain in the middle. The fountain has running water.

“Check the replay of the flyby and see if that’s the only fountain,” he says, and hears one of his analysts go to work.

The Cornucopia is the usual mix of weapons, survival supplies, medical kits, and ration packs. It’s a tempting spread for any tribute stupid enough to go for it. Victor feels his heart thump disconcertingly hard in his chest when he sees what are clearly meant as lures for District Ten: a pair of claws and a javelin bag, the top open so there could be no mistaking what it was. These aren't the huge sport javelins, but sleek metal, lightweight enough to heft and throw with accuracy.

Around the fountain in a circle are twelve dark holes, leading down elevator shafts to the waiting rooms below the Arena. Yuri and Mila are there, with Lilia and Chris, receiving their last words of advice before they’re sent to the surface.

“Get ready,” Victor says. “And someone get me breakfast with coffee.”

He hears a runner leave as Seneca Crane, the Head Gamemaker, begins to speak.

“Welcome to the 77th Annual Hunger Games!” He’s smiling into the camera, that ridiculous beard groomed to perfection. His hair looks like a shining black helmet on top of his head. “We’ve got an exciting Arena and twenty-four amazing tributes for you to watch over the course of the next few days.”

A staff member runs up to Victor’s elbow. He tunes out the rest of Seneca’s speech, about the glory of the Capitol and the privilege of running the Games.

“There are at least three other fountains in the flyby,” the staffer says. Victor thinks he remembers this one, but Victor can’t be sure, so he doesn’t use a name when he says thank you.

“Now, without any further delay, citizens of Panem, I present to you, the Hunger Games!”

Motion from the circle around the fountain. The tops of their heads come first, then the rest of them, twenty-four tributes waiting to fight or die. 

Yuri and Mila are tense on their platforms, waiting.

“Check on vital signs?” Victor asked.

“All clear!”

“Cameras on both tributes?”

“Online.”

No matter how many times he says it, he feels like he should rebel. This one time, he should refuse to give the signal. They would kill him, of course, but he wouldn’t be complicit.

“Signal go.”

On the screen, there’s a birds-eye view of the tributes surrounding the Cornucopia, nestled in front of the fountain. Some of the tributes are directly behind it, and will have to clear water and statuary to get to the goods. District Ten is right in front of it.

The screens divide. Yuri’s face appears in the top left, Mila’s in the top right. He can see Yuri’s eyes fixed on something in the Cornucopia. Mila is looking at him and frowning. Her eyes dart across to District One, four platforms to her left. She looks at Yuri again.

“He’s going to go for it,” Victor says.

“You told him not to!” Georgi is right next to him. Victor didn’t even hear him approach.

“Look at him. He’s going to go for it.”

The gong rings out, and Yuri goes for it.

He doesn’t run for the weapons. Victor somehow knew he wouldn’t, but Georgi makes an exclamation of surprise. Instead, Yuri is running away from the Careers toward a water pack, the kind that Yuri would recognize from long rides out to pasture. It’s meant to be worn on the back, and Victor grits his teeth to keep from spitting curses. He’d been the one to impress how important water was on the both of them.

“Yuri!” Mila yells. She hesitates for a second too long, glancing over at the Careers.

The girl from Twelve is dead. Victor can’t be sure, since she’s crumpled in a heap on her platform, but it looks like her neck is broken. Minami is nowhere to be seen. The boy from Eleven, Michele, grabs his sister Sara’s hand and pulls her into a stumbling run. District Two gives chase, but the twins slip in between the buildings and are gone from the camera’s frame. Victor doesn’t watch to see if their pursuers catch up.

Mila takes off at a flat sprint toward the weapons. The girl from District One follows.

Yuri grabs the water pack, slings it on his back, and turns to look for Mila. There’s someone approaching him fast. The girl from Six, the one Victor had written off as not a threat. She has a knife in her hand.

“Yuri, turn!” Georgi shouts, as if Yuri could hear him.

“Faster, Mila,” Victor murmurs under his breath, because he sees where she’s running. The girl from One gets intercepted by the boy from Nine, unexpectedly, who swings wildly with a nightstick. Mila makes it to the javelins.

Victor sees now why the judges scored her as high as they did. She has the javelin out of its containing bag and hoisted in her right hand. Yuri, several steps away, sees her raise it.

“Get down!” Mila shouts, and Yuri drops. She lets the weapon fly, putting her body into the throw, her foot kicking out for balance. It strikes Yuri’s pursuer high on the left side, through her lung and out the back.

Yuri spins around in time for the girl to collapse to her knees, blood fountaining from her mouth. He’s frozen, pale as a ghost, his lips bloodless.

“Move, Yuri,” Victor whispers. The staff member he’d sent to get breakfast appears at his elbow, but Victor makes no move to take the plate, only the coffee. He can’t even drink it.

Mila slings the bag with the javelins over her back. Three steps and she can grab the claws. Ten steps and she can grab Yuri, dragging him into the shadow of the Cornucopia. She leaves the javelin in the chest of the girl from Six and waits for an opening. The other tributes are fighting each other; the girl from One is grappling with both tributes from Nine. District Four appears to be in pursuit of District Eight, those tributes struggling to cross the fountain after a risky run at the Cornucopia.

The girl from District One catches the arm of the boy she’s fighting and wrenches, twisting his shoulder out of its socket. She snatches the nightstick from his nerveless fingers and cracks it across his jaw. Blood flies from his mouth and he falls, insensate, on the pavement. The girl from his district turns and runs as District One brings her nightstick down on the fallen tribute’s head until something gives. Then she straightens and looks around.

Her compatriot has taken care of the boy from District Five. It’s a more violent bloodbath than Victor has seen in a few years. Mila and Yuri need to get out of there.

Mila sees her opening as the tributes from Four catch up to the tributes from Eight and a desperate fight in the water begins. She grabs Yuri’s hand and runs across the open area behind the fountain, toward a narrow street. Crumbling buildings loom above them, and bits of rubble will make the side streets treacherous cover, but they’ll be out of the open.

The girl from District One sees them and takes off in pursuit. She’s closing the gap fast. The boy from her district is too far away to get to them soon. Victor clutches the coffee cup, barely refraining from crushing it in his hands, sending scalding coffee pouring out over his skin.

Yuri looks back. He sees the girl coming, yells, and pulls Mila to the side as District One leaps. Her downward blow catches a pair of old shutters, tenuously clinging to one of the buildings’ windows. It shatters into wood splinters.

Mila pulls another of the javelins from her bag and holds it like a staff. The girl from District One pivots on her toes and comes at her.

Georgi’s theatrical gasps are distracting. Victor narrows his focus on the ebb and flow of blows between them. Mila moves the javelin more clumsily than her opponent’s nightstick, only a few days’ worth of training compared to a lifetime. Behind them, Yuri has put his back to the wall, watching. The male tribute from District One is getting closer.

Not fast enough. Mila catches a blow from the nightstick on her ribs and grunts. Victor winces in sympathy, hoping the strike didn’t catch a rib. It extends the girl’s reach, though, and Mila is able to swing the javelin around along her elbow and thrust. The razor sharp point of the javelin plunges through the tribute’s chest and out the other side. Blood sprays on Mila’s face. She follows the girl to the ground and sets a foot on her throat to wrench the javelin free. Then she turns, grabs Yuri by the arm, and drags him down the street.

Victor’s cameras follow them, racing through narrow alleyways and dessicated parking lots haunted with the hulks of rusted-out cars. Yuri has the claws, Victor notices, tucked under his arm. They’re breathing hard. Mila’s eyes are wild, her expression drawn tight. She’s running in a panic, putting distance between her and the threat without any thought toward destination.

“Maintain a map of their immediate area until we can get more information,” Victor says. His body unlocks from the tense posture he’d been holding himself in. Nobody has run after Mila and Yuri. Once they stop, they’ll be safe.

Within a few breaths, Yuri does gasp, “Stop!”

Mila stumbles over her own feet as she stops, whirling around, the javelin braced against her body like she’s ready to fight again. There’s only Yuri standing across from her, heaving for breath, letting the claw weapons clatter to the ground as he leans over to put his hands on his knees.

“I think we lost them.” Yuri is panting like he’s overheated. He fumbles with the water pack, unhooking the hose and nozzle from the side, and opens the valve. Nothing comes out. “What—”

“You didn’t expect they’d actually give us water,” Mila says, between her own exhausted gasps. “We’ll still have to find a source. You went in for nothing.”

“It’ll be worth it when we do find a source,” Yuri argues, bristling. “We can stay on the move instead of having to stay near water.”

“We shouldn’t have run so far.” Mila looks at the surrounding buildings. They’re in part of the ruined city meant to look like crumbling highrises. She gestures to the one that looks like it’s least likely to fall down. “Let’s get off the street.”

Yuri forces the door to the building open with his shoulder. It’s eerie inside, with knocked-over chairs and scattered papers giving the sense that this place actually is a surviving relic from the rebellion, one of those places that was bombed by the Capitol until little of it remained.

They make their way up ten flights of stairs before dragging their exhausted bodies to the wall beneath the window, where sit still for a long stretch of time, just breathing.

Victor finds a nearby chair and sits on it, finally reaching out to take his plate from the very patient staff member. He starts to eat his breakfast of cold sausages and somewhat congealed eggs as he watches his tributes watch each other.

“You saved my life,” Yuri says finally. “Thanks.”

“We’re even,” Mila says. She’s not looking at him, but instead at the far wall, her gaze unfocused. “I wouldn’t have seen her coming if you hadn’t said.”

Yuri’s mouth twists like he wants to argue with her, but he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “Let’s not keep a tally.”

Mila grunts, probably an agreement. They’re still breathing hard around their words. Mila groans and heaves herself up until she can carefully stick her head out of the window, mindful of the broken glass still clinging to its frame.

“Breathe quieter,” she says, and Yuri kicks her in the ankle. They’ve both found faint smiles by the time she pulls her head back in the window. “I don’t hear anyone coming. I think we’ve put enough distance between us and them that it should be a while before we come across anyone.”

“Good,” Yuri says, his head falling back to rest on the wall with a thump. “Did you sleep last night?”

“Maybe an hour.”

“Yeah, me too. We should sleep now and try and find water when it’s dark.”

“Bad idea,” Victor says, drawing the attention of the nearby staffers.

“Oh, but if they’re moving at night there will be less chance other tributes could see them,” Georgi says. It looks like he’s finally figured out how to breathe again. Victor was sure he was going to pass out while watching the bloodbath.

“That’s why the Gamemakers will come up with something evil, because they don’t want it to be easy for the tributes to avoid each other.” Victor finishes his plate and passes it off to the waiting staffer. He sips his coffee slowly, watching Mila and Yuri curl up on the floor. They’re facing each other, holding hands across the gap between them. He knows that image is likely on the main broadcast, before the camera jumps to other tributes.

“Mr. Nikiforov,” a staff member at his elbow says. “Will you be sleeping now?”

Victor almost laughs. Capitol people are so _literal_. He shakes his head, gesturing to his coffee.

“Get me a tally of the casualties at the Cornucopia,” he says, to give that staff member something to do. “Someone run back the footage of them running through the Arena and see if you can find a water source.”

Georgi is watching the two of them on screen, his eyes misty as he sees them holding hands. Victor has been working with Georgi for almost six years, and he’s learned when to recognize when he’s in high dramatic form.

“Georgi, I’m sure the sponsors will be ready to look at District Ten after that. Would you go see if you can stir up something? You know how I like to operate.” Victor prefers to fundraise from sponsors at the Games, rather than ask to fund a specific venture or accept offers. Offers always come with strings, and when he got specific, he risked playing his hand to other mentors. There were advantages to the other styles, but his worked for their team, and worked for District Ten. Their support was usually good, even when their tributes weren’t high-scoring.

This year, Georgi might set a new record for fundraising on the first day.

“Oh, Victor, they’re such beautiful friends,” Georgi sighs, his voice wavering. He dabs tears away from his eyes before they can fall into his makeup. “The other districts won’t even know what hit them. I’ll see you in a few hours.”

“Good luck,” Victor calls after him, not looking away from the screens to see his exit.

He doesn’t realize what his instincts are telling him about what he sees until Mila’s eyes open. Then he notices that her breathing isn’t even like Yuri’s, her hand not lax and uncurled. She sits up slowly, carefully extracting her hand from his.

She stands on silent feet, creeping over to the javelin bag and the bloody javelin that lays beside it. Victor hears a gasp come from around the room and doesn’t let his face show anything. Mila sinks down next to the weapon, her back sliding against the wall. She reaches out and touches the blood, a thumbprint smeared against metal.

Mila grabs the railing of the staircase, pulls herself to her feet, and heaves, vomiting ten stories to the ground floor below. Victor hears general sounds of disgust from behind him, but he keeps his eyes on her. She has her hair pulled back in one hand, like she knew this was going to come, and keeps going until she’s dry heaving.

The noise wakes Yuri. Victor hears the quiet tone from the screen that indicates a rise in his heart rate, but his eyes don’t open. He stays unmoving, curled up on the floor, struggling to keep his chest rising and falling at the same rate, while Mila leans back against the wall and spits on the floor. She sinks down to sit beside the javelin again, pulls the bag to her, and begins unzipping the pockets. Before long she finds a cloth and starts to clean it.

Yuri cracks his eyes open, a bare sliver of green visible on the camera that’s on his face. The cameras inside the Arena are tiny, ever-present but impossible to see, and can zoom from impressive distances away. He can’t see what Mila is doing from the angle where he’s laying, and he doesn’t try to move. He closes his eyes again, his breathing evening back out within a few minutes.

Mila eventually sleeps, too. The staff brings Victor a roster of the dead. Seven died at the Cornucopia. It’s less deadly than some Games he can remember, but the deaths were brutal. Mila accounted for two, and at this stage in the Games, she’s a front-runner. It means they'll get more sponsorships, more attention and patronage. Victor sips his coffee, gone cold, and watches them sleep.

The cannon wakes them at sundown. They sit up, watching the sky where the dead tributes are projected.

“Seventeen left,” Mila says. “When do you want to move?”

Yuri looks up and down the street through the window. “We can go now, when there’s a little bit of light left. We must have passed water while we were running.”

“Put your claws on,” Mila says, shouldering her javelin bag and picking up the one she cleaned. Yuri looks at the weapons like he would rather do anything else in the world. Mila’s patience, it seems, is not limitless. “I'm probably not going to be able to protect you every time. Whatever you've got in your head, get it out. We have to move. Put them on.”

Yuri pulls the gauntlets onto his arms with stiff, jerky movements. He flexes his hands in the gloves, not unlike the leather gloves he'd worn in the tribute parade and on Phichit’s stage.

He touches his fingers to the base of his palm and the claws retract with a hiss.

“Okay,” he says, looking terrified but determined, the skin of his face drawn and pale.

They descend the stairs, skirting the puddle of Mila’s breakfast on the floor. Neither of them talk about it.

“Give me a readout of Mila’s vitals,” he says. A moment later he has a pad in his hand. The tracker the Capitol put inside her can read down to the tiniest detail. Victor isn’t a doctor, but he can read the levels. She’ll be okay without something to eat for a little while longer, even with losing her meal for the day.

He watches them find the signs of their own passage through the streets as they walk back the way they came. Dusk takes a long time to bleed from the sky. By the time they're stumbling along blind, barely any starlight to light the way, his staff informs him that they did pass two fountains on their tear through the Arena, and that they're headed in the right direction. Movement at night makes him uneasy, but finding water will be worth it.

“Mr. Nikiforov? I think you should see this,” a staff member says anxiously, and Victor goes back to their workstation.

The image he's pointing at gives Victor chills. It's a cool blob on the infrared monitors, cooler than a human body but warmer than the air around it. Only half of it is on the screen at first, and then its other half appears as if out of nowhere.

“Show me that street in the daylight,” Victor demands, and the staff member pulls it up quickly. It's a manhole. A sewer cover.

“It’s closing on them,” the staffer says. The anxiety in his voice draws attention. “I can't judge its size very well, but it looks big—”

“Victor! You won't believe how—”

“Georgi! Not now!” Victor tries not to raise his voice with Georgi, but this is important. “Is there night vision on any of the cameras?”

“I'm trying, Mr. Nikiforov. The public has a feed—”

“Give me the public feed,” Victor says.

The scream fills the room first. The eerie green was of night vision bathes them, and he can finally see the monster the Capitol has engineered as it savages the girl from Seven. It's like a lizard, long and squat, each of its broad toes tipped with a long, razor-sharp claw. Its jaws, worrying their way up the tribute’s leg, are wide and lined with a double row of jagged teeth.

A hatchet cleaves at the thing’s skull, skidding off hide and bone. The wielder—Leo, the boy from Seven—lifts it over his head and strikes again. The monster shakes its head from side to side, ripping flesh. Its tail lashes, but before it can move to whip Leo off his feet, the boy from Six is there, armed with a long spear. He stabs down, pinning the tail to the street and eliciting a wailing roar from the creature. Leo hacks with his hatchet and this time it bites, dark blood gushing from its throat.

“Switch back,” Victor says, anxiety making his voice sharp. Now the cameras are in night vision, and Victor tenses. It's almost on them.

“Look out!” Georgi cries uselessly from the doorway.

The boom of the cannon makes Mila and Yuri jump and look around. It's the only thing that saves them as the monster stalking them charges.

“Yura!” Mila yells. She dodges to one side and Yuri rolls to the other. The claws extend from the gauntlets with a flick of his wrist.

“I hear it but I can't see it!” Yuri springs back, away from the thing’s second charge. He gets a look at it this time, as it snaps its salivating jaws in his face. He strikes out with the claws. They skid off the thing’s hide, but catch in its eye and tear. It gives an almighty shriek and skitters away.

“Go now!” Mila clangs her javelin against the ground and Yuri’s head turns to her position. Blindly, he follows the sound as she drags the javelin behind her, running down the same street they'd escaped before, back toward the Cornucopia.

The lizard thing is still thrashing and clawing at its ruined eye, but Victor is willing to bet there are more of them.

“Get off the street,” he begs them, though they can't hear him. He has the back of the staffer’s chair and the edge of his desk in a white-knuckled grip.

“I hear running water,” Yuri says suddenly.

“Right next to us, it sounds like.”

The cameras switch out of night vision in time for Yuri and Mila to step around a corner and into a circle of floodlights. They both dodge out of the light as soon as they step in it, crouched and wary.

“Is there anyone near them?” Victor asks.

“The nearest tributes are the girl from Nine and the boy from Twelve, but they're not within line of sight,” one of the other staffers answers.

Victor tries not to hold his breath waiting. In the middle of the lit area is a fountain, a big enough source of water to fill the pack Yuri is carrying.

“Let's hope the monsters don't like the light,” Yuri says, stepping toward the fountain at last.

“Who knows?” Mila looks over her shoulder into the dark before following, keeping her back to Yuri, watching for movement.

“They weren't out during the day.”

“They might have just released them.”

“I heard the cannon. Sixteen.”

“Sixteen,” Mila says, with a nod.

“Can we just—” Yuri sits down heavily, trying to catch his breath, even as Mila frowns in disapproval. “For a minute.”

Mila crouches down next to him, the javelin held firm in her hands. “We should get into one of these buildings and barricade the door.

“Who says those things aren't in the buildings?”

“Would you rather stay in the middle of the square with no cover?” Mila waves her hand at the floodlights.

“Stop being a know-it-all, hag!” Yuri says, and pulls up short. It seems like a joke he's made with her before, something he isn’t sure he can say now.

“Stop being a brat, brat!” Mila shoots back, and they both relax, smiling tentatively at each other. It's like whatever strangeness had settled between them after the interview is gone entirely.

Yuri doesn’t grace that with a response, but he does squint at the circle of buildings hazily visible through the light.

“Which one do you think?”

“There are no tall ones like last time.” Mila points haphazardly at the building closest to them. “Less distance to run?”

“Are we running?” Yuri asks. grunting as he picks up the water pack and puts it over his shoulders. He's bent a little under the weight, but it's nothing he can't stand.

“Do you want to bet your life on that thing being gone for good after you put out its eye?”

“No,” Yuri says reluctantly. “Okay, so we run.”

“On three,” Mila says.

They crouch, ready to take off, but Yuri’s face suddenly draws down in a frown. “Do you hear something?”

Mila tilts her head. “No, I—”

“The water!” Yuri dashes over to the fountain, which has gone silent. “They’re draining the water, quick!”

He fumbles the cap off the water pack, shoving it into the fountain. It bubbles as it fills, the only sound in the silence now that the fountain isn’t running. Victor nearly feels faint with relief that Yuri even noticed the noise, or noticed that the noise was missing. If he hadn’t, they would be so much worse off.

Yuri manages to fill the pack before the last of the fountain water swirls down the drain and is gone. The Gamemakers can turn these off and on at will. Whether they’ll turn them back on after this is anyone’s guess, but thanks to Yuri’s quick thinking, they won’t die of dehydration before then.

“Running?” Mila asks.

“Running,” Yuri says, shouldering the much heavier water pack with a grunt.

They run for it on three. There's no movement in the dark, no monster to leap out at them. They crash through the building’s door, nearly taking off its hinges, and slam it shut. The cameras switch to an inside view. Night vision again.

“So we learned not to move at night.” Mila sets her javelins down by the wall.

“I'll watch first,” Yuri says. He retracts his claws and feels around in the dark until he finds a chunk of broken concrete. With a groan, he rolls it over to rest against the door. The light from the fountain outside is enough for them to see by a little, dimming the room and making the edges of everything fuzzy.

“Won't hear me arguing,” Mila says. Victor lets himself smile, and straightens up from where he was still crowding that poor staffer against his desk.

“Out of danger for now. We have survived the first day of the Games,” he says to the room, to a brief but enthusiastic round of applause.

“Victor! The Capitol loves them!” Georgi enthuses, bouncing in place. Victor startles. He forgot Georgi was there.

“Well, that's good news,” Victor says. 

“Look at these numbers!” Georgi shoves a tablet at him, and Victor scrolls through the readout, his eyebrows climbing. Seventeen individual donors have already given them a tidy sum, and they don't need anything else right now.

“This is amazing, Georgi. Will you be able to take night watch tonight? I hate to ask, since you’ve been working so hard, but—”

“Of course!” Georgi interrupts. “I didn't get a chance to meet the staff, I want to make sure I do.”

“I'm going to sleep, then. Wake me up when they change watch.”

The sleeping quarters of each district's media room are little more than lines of cots. Victor doesn't spend much time sleeping during the Games anyway, and he's gotten used to falling asleep when he has to. He doesn’t dare take a sedative, because Georgi won't be able to wake him if he's needed, but he doesn't usually have nightmares during the Games. He crawls onto a cot and falls asleep almost as soon as his head hits the pillow.

The staff member who wakes him does it properly, by standing at the foot of the cot and calling his name. She must have worked with him before. He goes back into the media room to find a new shift has taken over. Yuri is laying down to sleep while Mila takes up the post by the door. After a few moments of watching, and a report that the cannon hasn't fired again since that creature killed the girl from Seven, Victor goes back to sleep.

They wake him with the dawn, because Mila and Yuri are up, too. They're talking in low voices, trying to plan out their next strategy. Yuri wants to double back to the Cornucopia to scavenge rations, if there are any left. Mila wants to find another highrise as a vantage point. Victor can see the advantage to both strategies, and is calmly watching them argue, until they both abruptly fall silent, heads tipped like they're listening.

“Proximity?” Victor asks.

“District Twelve is less than a block away,” the staff member says.

Minami appears not a few minutes later, heading straight for the fountain. He doesn't look like he's checking his surroundings at all. There are no front-facing windows in the building Mila and Yuri have claimed, so they can't know who's out there. All they can do is listen.

Minami pauses when he finds the fountain dry, staring at it with a blank, hollow-eyed look. He rubs his fingers along the stones at the bottom and licks bare drops from his skin; it’s not enough to sustain him, and he’ll already be feeling the effects after just one night. He looks like he hasn't slept, dark circles under his eyes, his hands trembling a little as he moves. He settles on the edge of the fountain and starts doing something with his hands. When he bends forward and rubs his hair vigorously, Victor realizes he’s rubbing dirt into the bright strands.

“Smart,” Victor says. At least Celestino’s tribute follows his advice.

Yuri is creeping to the door, which isn’t smart. He can barely see through the crack between the wood and the stone doorframe.

“It’s the kid from Twelve, the one that kept following us,” he says. “Trying to make that stupid hair less obvious.”

“By sitting in the middle of the open with no cover,” Mila says dryly. She’s not wrong, though Victor has a feeling Minami scouted the area before he made for the fountain at all.

The anthem starts to play, then, and Minami pauses his progress to look up at the sky. The only portrait there is the girl from District Seven. Yuri and Mila see it, too.

“I wonder if it was those things,” Mila says. 

“Probably. I don’t think anyone could see well enough to actually fight in the dark out there.”

The concrete and stone of the Arena has the effect of creating silence except for the wind groaning through the alleys, streets, and badly-sealed doors. Minami has heard them; probably not what they’re saying, but their voices, definitely. He stands slowly from the fountain and draws a short piece of broken stone from his boot, sharpened down to a point at one end.

Yuri hisses through his teeth, watching Minami look around at the buildings, tense, the stone knife held out in front of him. It’s a pitiful weapon, especially compared with the ones Victor’s tributes are armed with.

“Who’s there?” Minami calls tentatively. His eyes dart around the square and settle on the recently broken doorway Mila and Yuri are hiding behind. Victor expects him to run, now that he knows where the other tributes are, but instead he comes closer, slowly, his knife still brandished.

Yuri’s claws slide out with a quiet sound of metal on metal. Mila hefts her javelin.

“If he goes past, we let him,” Yuri whispers. He can’t see the annoyed look Mila gives the back of his head, but Victor can. She’s right, and he’s torn between being glad for her ruthlessness and feeling the loss of the good-humored girl he’d seen under her armor.

“I know someone’s there,” Minami says, coming closer. “You left footprints.”

Yuri shoves the chunk of stone blocking the door away. The scrape echoes loudly in the empty square. Minami freezes, crouching, anticipating movement. Yuri breathes in, breathes out.

He bursts through the door with his claws out, jumping for Minami before he can flee. They both go down, Minami on his back, his breath leaving him in a wheeze. Yuri is straddling his chest. He raises his hand, claws glinting in the early morning sun.

He hesitates.

Victor wonders if Yuri is even seeing Minami underneath him, or if he’s seeing another face entirely. He seems to miss the way Minami’s eyes go from cold to wide and tearful in seconds, his lip trembling.

“Please don’t! Don’t hurt me!” he begs, and if Victor hadn’t just seen a killer in his face, he’d be fooled too. “I’m sorry! I don’t want to be alone, please!”

“Yuri.” Mila sounds exasperated when Yuri lowers his hand, tapping at the palm to retract the claws. Minami takes a shuddering, hiccuping breath, his eyes darting past Yuri to Mila.

“Thank you,” he says. He sounds timid, but now that Victor knows it’s an act, he’s not sure whether he’s impressed with Minami’s acting or furious with Yuri for being taken in by it.

“If I see you again…” Yuri says, trailing off as he slowly gets up. He doesn’t offer Minami a hand up.

“I was actually hoping I could come with you,” Minami says, scuffing the toe of his shoe against the ground.

“Sorry,” Mila says, not sounding sorry. “Clear out.”

“Please.” Minami puts a desperate edge into his voice. “I can help you. I know where you can find food.”

Yuri and Mila exchange a look. Mila’s scowl plainly says she doesn’t like this, and Yuri’s frown echoes the sentiment, but Victor knows how hard it is for them to resist the temptation of food right now. Their wild run through the city and their mad dash away from the lizard creature burned through energy, and they haven’t eaten since before they were sent into the Arena.

“Only for a little while,” Mila says grudgingly. “And if you try anything, Yuri won’t be the one taking you out.”

Minami eyes the javelin she’s hefting and nods, his throat bobbing on a swallow.

“It’s back this way,” he says. “Follow me.”

“I don’t like it,” Victor says. “Find all the tape of Twelve from the time he left the Cornucopia and tell me if he’s lying.”

The hardest part of mentoring is always this, here, watching the Games at a remove. He can cast his memory back, try to call to mind the sensations of hunger and exhaustion that ravaged his body, the ever-present fear and paranoia that prickled the hairs on the back of his neck, the surges of heart-pounding adrenaline and the dangerous crash that followed. It’s still only an echo, and a pale one, of what the tributes are going through now. He can try to think like them, he can try to figure out what he would do in their place, but he can’t predict what they’ll do.

Georgi, now that he doesn’t have to wake up so hideously early to see the tributes off to the training center, wanders in after Victor is done with his breakfast. He goes around saying hello to the staff, which Victor watches from the corner of his eye as he watches Mila, Yuri, and Minami progress through the cracked streets.

“Good morning, Victor!” Georgi says with enthusiasm. “Oh, have they made a friend?”

Victor swallows back his first response, to tell Georgi there are no friends in the Games, because Mila and Yuri have handily proven him wrong on that one. “They’ve teamed up with the boy from Twelve because he says he knows where they can find rations.”

“That’s wonderful! I wonder how it’s playing with the public.” Without waiting for Victor to respond, he drifts over to the broadcast media section of their staff, who monitor the commentators, discussion forums, and social media accounts of prominent Capitol members. Victor doesn’t pay attention to the press while his head is in the Games, so he’s glad Georgi is covering that angle.

“Mr. Nikiforov?” one of the staffers says, something tremulous in her voice. “I don’t really know what I’m looking at, but… I think it’s one of those unusual things you told us to watch for.”

It’s rare for any of his staff to show initiative, especially when it’s a face he doesn’t recognize. Victor gives the main screen another long look, watching Mila guard their backs as Minami and Yuri pick through the rubble, and then goes over to the station.

She has footage up from what looks like the main audience feed. It’s the two tributes from Three, but their injuries are like nothing Victor has ever seen. They’re staggering down one of the broken streets like drunkards, arms slung around each other. Their skin is mottled with bright red. It looks like a sunburn, complete with skin peeling away from their faces, but it’s worse than any sunburn Victor has ever seen; the skin looks like it’s sloughing, not just peeling. They come to a stumbling halt as Victor watches, only for the boy to gasp for breath, heave, and spit a worrying quantity of bright red blood onto the street.

“Stop, stop,” the female tribute gasps, sinking to her knees. Her fingers leave bloody streaks on the boy’s sleeve as she pulls at him. “Just. We can’t do anything, so just.”

The boy laughs, a broken sound. 

“Did ourselves in by being too clever, didn’t we?” he asks. His voice is cracking, and before he finishes he coughs again, blood flying from his lips.

They’re dying, but of what, Victor doesn’t know. Some kind of environmental poisoning? Something they ate? A chill goes through Victor, remembering Minami saying he knew where to find food.

“Can you run their footage back?” he asks. The districts don’t have access to each others’ exclusive footage. If the main audience feed wasn’t following Three, he might not be able to find out what this is.

Luck is with him. They watch the footage at double speed, because Victor doesn’t want to take his eyes off his tributes for long. At first, he still can’t work out what he’s looking at. The two tributes from Three seem to be following something, but he can’t work out what it is until the second time he has the staffer run it through.

They’re following the wires that run between the floodlights for the fountains. There’s more than one fountain scattered around the Arena, Victor sees now, disparate sources of water the Capitol can turn on and off at will to force the tributes to move. Three apparently had the idea that the source of the power would be a good, defensible location to hole up.

“Play it at regular speed,” Victor says, as the two tributes start to creep into the power plant.

He ignores their conversation at first, watching for something that could have caused the way they are now in the live footage. He’s so busy looking that he almost misses it.

“We’re dead,” the female tribute says, and her voice sounds so profoundly shocked that Victor’s eyes snap to her face. She’s looking at some kind of panel on one side of a thick door marked with a yellow symbol, a triangle with black marks slashed through it. “It’s not shielded, Matty. We’re dead.”

The male tribute—Matty—rushes to her side, looking at the same panel. The color drains from his face, and for a moment they both stand motionless, barely even breathing. The girl is crying silently. Matty picks up a chair and hurls it across the room with a scream of despair, and Victor motions for the staffer to switch the video back to double speed.

“What does the symbol on that door mean?” he asks. He’s long since gotten over the amused looks Capitol citizens give him when he doesn’t know something that’s common knowledge.

“It’s a radiation warning for power plants,” the staffer replies. There’s no smugness in her voice. She seems rattled. “The range of effect won’t be too wide, otherwise everyone would be dying of it by now. Probably a hundred feet?”

A hundred feet is still too wide of a radius. Victor feels like there’s a band squeezing his chest. “Can it be cured?”

“Radiation poisoning? Not when it’s progressed to this stage.” She brings the feed current. The two tributes from Three are both sitting in the street, holding hands. They look too weak to move. As Victor watches, movement catches his eye from the corner of the screen. Matty, the boy, starts to laugh as soon as the Careers come into the frame, both tributes from District Two and District Four.

“Go on!” he says, his voice so weak it’s barely a gasp. “We’re dead already, you’d be doing us a favor. Get more kills on your count, right?” 

The girl doesn’t even open her eyes. When she breathes, it rattles in her chest. Victor knows that sound. He’s heard that sound a thousand times in his dreams.

The girl from Two and the boy from Four exchange glances, but the boy from Two has no such hesitation. He’s armed with a sword, which he drives through Matty’s chest, cutting off his chilling laughter abruptly. The cannon fires a moment later, then fires again as he’s freeing his sword from Matty’s chest. The girl died on her own, slipped away without even opening her eyes. On the main screen, he sees Minami, Mila, and Yuri stop in their tracks at the sound of cannonfire, listen for a long moment, then resume their pace.

“How far away is that power plant from where Mila and Yuri are?” Victor asks. He tries to keep the tremble out of his voice, but he doesn’t think he’s successful.

“They aren’t moving in that direction,” the staffer says. She brings up the map of the Arena, what they’ve been able to piece together from the main broadcast and Mila and Yuri’s feeds. There are still a lot of blank spaces, but the picture is clear enough. The power station is maybe a few hours’ walk from where his tributes are.

“Georgi!” Victor says, going back to the main floor where the screen towers above them. Minami is pushing open the door to a large, squat building, waving Mila and Yuri in behind him. Georgi is still chatting with the media team. “ _Georgi!_ ”

Victor very, very rarely raises his voice. Georgi’s head comes up and he scurries over. He’s in that hideous purple makeup again, the stuff that makes his eyes look bruised. He looks up at the screen, then back at Victor.

“What’s the matter?”

“I need you to find out how much it is to purchase some kind of shot, or medication, or whatever is required to prevent radiation poisoning,” Victor says. His eyes are on the screen, watching Mila and Yuri creep in behind Minami, who is winding his way through towering shelves of boxes in what looks like a warehouse.

“Radiation?” Georgi asks, taken aback. “Where is there radiation?”

“The Gamemakers left an unshielded power relay station on the outskirts of the Arena. Both tributes from Three are dead because of it.” He can hear the urgency in his own voice, the thread of near-panic. “Find out.”

Georgi leaves without another word between them, his face pale under his makeup. Radiation is a silent killer, something that’s not even fair to put into the Arena. Not that ‘fair’ ever enters into the minds of the Gamemakers, but usually they’re more sporting about murdering the tributes.

His staff member never did get back to him about running District Twelve’s public tape back; maybe Minami has been off the public broadcast because he isn’t interesting. In the end it doesn’t matter. On the main screen, Minami shoves a big crate at Mila and Yuri, staying well out of striking distance of either of them. It won’t matter if Mila decides to kill him, because Victor knows how accurate she is with that javelin, but he remembers that Minami ran from the Cornucopia as soon as he was able to move, and wouldn’t have seen Mila’s killing throw. He’s treating her weapon like a sharpened quarterstaff, not a distance weapon. Victor hopes nothing happens that forces Mila to reveal her actual strength to him.

“Protein bars,” Minami says. “They’re individually sealed. They taste terrible, but they’ll fill you up.”

“Like anyone cares about the taste,” Yuri says. They open the crate. It’s full of ration bars, the kind the Capitol sends to District workers as a ‘reward’ when they’ve done well. They’ll keep a person alive, and that’s their only redeeming quality.

The three of them sit, Mila and Yuri immediately tearing into a ration bar apiece and devouring them like they aren’t even bothering to chew. Yuri offers the mouthpiece of the water pack to Mila first. She drinks, then passes it back to him so he can do the same. After a moment of hesitation, he offers it to Minami.

“Thanks,” Minami says. He sucks thirstily at the water hose until Yuri yanks it back with a glare, licking his lips to catch any stray drops.

“Thanks for this,” Yuri says, nodding to the rations. “We’ll find something to carry them in and go our separate ways.”

“Wait, but,” Minami says, getting to his feet. “We could stick together.”

“Pass,” Mila says, her grip on her javelin tightening. “Yuri and I have each other, and it seems like you’re doing fine on your own.”

“I’m small,” Minami says, putting a waver in his voice. “I don’t even have a weapon—”

“I’m small, too,” Yuri points out. His fit of soft-heartedness seems to have passed.

“Please,” Minami begs. Victor wonders when he learned that crying on command trick. It’s incredibly useful.

“I don’t trust you at my back, and that’s the way it is,” Yuri says. “Stay here if you want, it’s a pretty good place to hole up, but if I catch you following us like you did in the training center, I’ll kill you.”

Minami seems to realize that he isn’t going to convince them otherwise. He goes quiet, following Mila with his eyes as she starts to sort through other boxes and crates in the warehouse. She does eventually find a sturdy pack, which she fills with ration bars and hefts over her shoulder on the opposite side of the javelin bag.

“Good truce. You’ll let us walk away, now.” She’s not asking a question. Minami nods slowly. They still don’t turn their backs on him on the way out.

“I don’t like him,” Yuri says, once they’re out of the warehouse. They’ve taken a narrow side street, gone through another building, and are now several blocks away from Minami. He isn’t following, at least not for now. “There’s something about him I don’t trust.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself.” Mila shades her eyes against the late afternoon sun and points at what must have been an old office building, blocky, the sides of it entirely open now that all the glass has been shattered out. “That one?”

“It’s kind of exposed,” Yuri says, squinting at it. “You sure?”

“There have to be interior rooms, right? We passed another one of those fountains a couple blocks ago. I don’t think we should go too far from water.”

“Okay.” Yuri still sounds doubtful, but he does follow her into the building. They climb the stairs until they’re both panting, then exit the stairwell to the main floor. The wind howls here, six stories up, snatching at their hair and clothes. They find a low wall, probably something that used to be a workstation separation, same as the ones for his staff members here in the media room. With it at their back, the wind is cut down.

“We’ll hear it if someone comes through the door for the stairwell, and nobody can see us from here,” Mila says. “We don’t have to sleep in shifts.”

“Who do you think the cannons were for?” Yuri takes off the water pack, twisting his spine and groaning. Victor knows it’s probably heavy, and that carrying it around all day taxes Yuri’s energy, but he finds he’s glad Yuri went for it, risky as it was. It keeps them off the street, the most dangerous part of this Arena, and he won’t say no to that.

“I should make a public appearance,” Victor says. “They’ll be in one place until morning, since they won’t risk moving at night with those lizard muttations roaming the streets.”

“Good luck!” one of the staff members calls cheerfully, and Victor exits District Ten’s enclave into the main hallway.

He’s forgotten how dim the lights are in the media room, and he squints in the hallway lights, blinking to let his vision adjust. When he looks down at himself, he remembers that he slept in last night’s suit. That’s normal—nobody expects the mentors to look put together during the Games. Still, he tries to smooth the wrinkles and tug the cuffs straight.

He thankfully doesn't run into anyone in the hallway. Just inside the door, he remembers his sunglasses in the inside pocket of his jacket. Thankfully, he didn't roll over on top of them in the night. He slides them on as he opens the door, and as soon as the cameras are on him, the crowd goes insane.

Spectator’s Row springs up on the lawn in front of HQ every year for the Hunger Games. The public broadcast looms over the crowd, milling among huge pavilions, pop-up buildings, and rows upon rows of food carts. The richest and most powerful are behind the high privacy fence, in the VIP section. Victor sees an inset of his own face on the jumbotron and waves, smiling brightly and blowing a kiss to the crowd.

The crowd response means he doesn't have to go look for Georgi. He’s descending the steps to the pavilions when Georgi finds him, hurrying up out of the line of photographers. He slings an arm around Victor’s shoulders, turns them away from the camera, and holds his pad up to block their mouths.

“We can get it, but we can only get one, and it’ll take everything we have,” he says. “Are you sure this is a good idea? They might not even go in that direction.”

“But they might,” Victor says, squeezing Georgi’s shoulder hard. “It’s an invisible killer. There’s no way for either one of them to know it’s there. It’s like the gas in the Quell, Georgi, and Yuri can’t die like that.”

Georgi’s eyes go wide, nearly obscuring the ostentatious liner. He rears back, gripping Victor by the shoulder, speechless with shock. Victor never talks about the Quell, not with Georgi or anyone else. Victor knows he shouldn’t keep speaking without Georgi blocking their profile from the press, but he can’t help it.

“Please, Georgi. I need you back in the media room. Get it taken care of.”

“Call me,” Georgi says, slipping an earpiece in. Victor pulls his own from his pocket; he doesn’t like being on open headset while he’s working with sponsors, usually, because it makes them nervous. Right now, though, Georgi is right. They need to stay in contact. They connect as Victor descends the stairs and Georgi goes into HQ behind him. 

“They were safe where I left them,” Victor says.

“The feed has been on the boys from District Six and Seven. It’s a tragedy they had to meet in the Games.” Georgi’s tone is mournful. “It’s really very cute the way they are with each other.”

Victor sees it as he goes. Guang Hong Ji of Six and Leo de la Iglesia of Seven, Guang Hong with his shoulder under Leo’s arm as Leo limps along through the streets.

“We need to find somewhere to hide,” Guang Hong is saying as Victor comes to the first pavilion, within range of its speakers. “We don’t want to be on the street when those lizard things show back up again.”

“I can’t believe they got her,” Leo murmurs. He still has his hatchet, gripped tight in his right hand, and Guang Hong drags a spear in his left. “I should have been faster.”

“You almost died as it is.” Guang Hong bumps Leo’s hip with his own. “No more heroics.”

“One more heroic,” Leo says. “You should find someplace to stash me and go on.”

“No.” Guang Hong’s voice is so firm that Victor doesn’t think even he would argue. There’s assurance in his eyes, a strength of will Victor never would have expected when he saw that freckled face in the tribute parade.

Victor turns his attention away from the drama on the screen and enters the pavilion, walking into a scene not unlike the soiree after the parade. Suits, gowns, bodysuits and other ensembles of every color and pattern imaginable swim in front of Victor’s eyes. His clean-cut blue suit is a contrast, one that Victor has usually enjoyed striking. It sets him apart, makes him noticeable.

He wishes he were a little less noticeable today, as he’s promptly mobbed by what seems like half the presence in the tent.

“Victor! You finally joined us, and it only took you until the third day!” That from Chessa Glow, one of the newer escorts. “Kind of a dirty trick how they knocked mine out, don’t you think?”

She’s the escort for District Three, Victor remembers.

“Really a tough go of it this time,” he agrees. He hates having to treat the deaths like this, like they’re nothing. Those tributes suffered for hours before they died. He makes sure his smile is fixed and wide. “They had a good idea.”

“They did,” Chessa sighs. “But I hear you’re in the market to expand your little donation pool, and I have some sponsors that aren’t happy about that play by the Gamemakers. Would you like me to make some introductions?”

“That would be lovely of you, Chessa,” Victor says, and means it. He offers his arm, and she giggles and flutters a little while she takes it. Her blonde hair is streaked with cotton candy colors of pink, powder blue, and lilac, and it looks like she’s had some of it rerooted with tinsel. Her eye makeup is all glitter and crystals, from her eyelids back over her her eyebrows to her temples. She looks like some kind of fairy creature, bouncing along on her toes.

“I also have to thank you for winning me some money,” Chessa says. They’re waylaid by several pairs or little knots of people as they move, but Chessa and Victor navigate the polite necessities and move on quickly, both of them on a mission. “I bet you’d wear that horribly drab suit again, that exact one, and you did! How you can be friends with Christophe Giacometti and only want to wear _that_ is beyond me.”

“She’s right,” Georgi says suddenly in Victor’s ear. Victor starts a little, having forgotten he was there, and taps his earpiece in apology when Chessa looks at him. “Your suits are hideously boring, and you never let Chris do anything creative with them.”

Victor doesn’t want to go out in public wearing the kinds of things Chris wears on a regular basis. Chris is one of the best stylists he could ask to work with, honestly, but his tastes and Victor’s do not align. He says as much, and Chessa pats him on the forearm.

“You actually make me forget you’re from the Districts sometimes, did you know that?” she asks sadly, as if she would prefer never to be reminded.

“Thank you,” Victor says, winking at her. “I’m happy blaming my love for nice suits on dreadful District taste.”

“They aren’t nice suits,” Chessa sniffs, and Georgi chuckles in Victor’s ear.

The first sponsor she introduces Victor to is a corporate player, head of some petroleum giant that has large interests in District Three and its refineries. He’s a tall, lean man with the artificial-looking skin of someone who’s had his wrinkles filled. His hair is dyed fairly obviously from grey to an dusty brown, his roots showing a little. He sports a narrow goatee and a frown.

“A damn shame of them to do it like this,” he says, after introducing himself only as Marcus with a firm shake of Victor’s hand. “It seems like your Mila is pulling along well, though I wonder what she means in keeping that boy around. He hesitates! You didn’t try to break him of that before they went in?”

“Yuri is a clever player,” Victor says. “It’s not hesitation to try and avoid expending energy you don’t need to.”

“You know I’m talking about that District Twelve boy, Nikiforov,” Marcus says, stabbing a finger at Victor’s face. “Your tribute had him dead to rights and didn’t finish him off.”

“District Twelve is turning out to be pretty useful to my tributes, don’t you think?” Victor asks, tilting his head to the side with the smile that Georgi sometimes calls _savage_.

“Dial it down, Victor,” Georgi says. “I can hear you about to gut him from here.”

“A little bit of serendipity there,” Marcus agrees reluctantly, nodding. “They’re both quick thinkers, that’s for certain. Have any bets on who’s going to be your last one standing?”

“I don’t bet on the Games.”

“You should know that!” Chessa says, still on his arm. “Victor never bets.”

“I’d guess that’s experience talking, eh? That’s fine! Leaves better stakes for the rest of us without insider knowledge.” Marcus laughs, and Victor wishes he _could_ gut the man.

“My insider knowledge is that District Ten has a very good chance,” Victor says instead. He’s here to push, after all. “Mila and Yuri are strong competitors.”

“Mila is a strong competitor. That Yuri kid wouldn’t still be alive if it wasn’t for her.” Marcus snorts. “It’s too bad she has a soft spot. She’s rivaling the Careers in kill count!”

Mila has two confirmed kills. The only other tribute to match her is the boy from District Two; they’ve counted the girl from Three as his kill even though she technically died of radiation. The rest of the tributes only have one, or none—the majority of them haven’t made a kill. That’s how it usually goes.

“Back Mila, then,” Victor says. “She’ll get to the Final Six.”

“Not if she goes near that power plant, she won’t,” Marcus says sourly. “Damned unsporting of them.”

“I’m working on that,” Victor says, being deliberately vague. “Maybe it won’t be as much of a problem as you think, with your support.”

“Too specific!” Georgi says into Victor’s earpiece. Chessa is giving him a surprised look. They’re right—Victor is never so candid about what he needs.

It seems to work with Marcus, though, as Victor gets a handshake promise of a donation and lets Chessa whisk him on.

Night falls as he works the crowd, moving from executives to minor government officials to top-name designers to media personalities. Victor knows most of their names, has met many of them at past Games, and Georgi fills him in on anything he might have missed in the past months in District Ten. Most of the sponsors Victor sets about wooing are enthusiastic about Mila and skeptical of Yuri, and Victor finds himself slipping more than once, defending Yuri before he thinks about it. 

He leaves Chessa to make her way back home, her responsibilities finished, about the time dark truly descends on the Arena. The cameras switch to night vision, flicking through the tributes to try and find something interesting to follow. It’s a lull in the Games. Victor’s skin prickles in dread; a lull is never a good thing. 

The goosebumps were accompanied by a little shiver down his spine when a smooth voice spoke in his ear and a broad hand landed on the small of his back.

“Victor, I can’t tell you how delighted I am to see you.”

“Gaius,” Victor says, turning with a broad smile. “Lovely to run into you as well.”

Gaius, it seems, has foregone the ridiculous waistcoat looks. His suit is cut to fit his frame, in a peacock green with shimmering gold lapels. His tie is the same shade, as is his eye and lip liner. He still looks like he’s trying to be ten years younger.

“District Ten is doing fairly well for itself. Some of my compatriots were skeptical when I laid down my bets, but I’m glad you’re proving a wise investment.” Gaius’s hand skims lower, suggestively close to resting on Victor’s ass. Victor steps forward to grab a small plate of thinly-sliced prosciutto wrapped around olives and cheese. It gives him an excuse to step out of range of Gaius’s grabby hands.

“The two of them are a fantastic team,” Victor says. He’s been emphasizing their teamwork and their friendship all night. It’s lost him a few of the old purists, who tend to only want to see bloodbaths and lose patience with the human interest angle, but a good many enjoy the drama and the emotion of it all.

“Your golden boy has a soft heart,” Gaius observes. The little starlet that was on his arm at the last party is still there, and she smacks Gaius playfully.

“I think it’s so noble, what he’s doing! He gave that District Twelve boy another chance and everything.” She sighs. “He’s cute, too, isn’t he? Like a little kitten.”

“He does have some attractive qualities,” Gaius says, and Victor knows that tone of interest. His throat feels like sandpaper. He takes a bite so he doesn’t have to respond.

“Those eyes,” the girl says. “Every time the camera zooms in on them, I feel like I’m in danger! He may have a heart, but seems so vicious.”

“A kitten with claws,” Gaius says, and laughs loudly. Victor remembers that Gaius used to call him _bunny_ when he was younger. He grips the plate harder to keep his hands from shaking.

“Yuri is only waiting for the right moment,” Victor says. He can’t quite manage his widest smile, but he hopes his expression doesn’t look drawn or pinched. “District Ten would be happy for your continued support.”

“Oh, I think I’ve steered enough your way for the time being.” Gaius sips his drink, his lipstick leaving blue on the rim of the glass. “I might be able to be convinced with a little extra effort.”

“Victor,” Georgi says in his ear. Victor had forgotten he was there, again. “We have the inoculation. We can release it anytime.”

Victor takes a step back and ducks his head toward his shoulder to hide his face. “Not in the dark, they’ll never find it and it’ll put them square in the path of those muttations.”

“They’re not moving anywhere for the time being anyway,” Georgi says. “We can release in the morning.”

“Something exciting happening?” Gaius asks, his eyes sharp on Victor’s earpiece. “Usually you aren’t walking around with a live headset.”

“You know how necessary coordination is to the Games,” Victor says with a bright smile. “Georgi is a wonderful partner. I’m never worried about leaving the media room in his hands.”

“Stop, I can’t cry while I’m concentrating,” Georgi says, and he honestly sounds choked up.

“I’ll leave you to it, Victor. You know how to find me if you’re truly in need.” Gaius winks at him, and walks off with his starlet on his arm. Victor wonders how she feels, knowing she’s only a pretty prop for Gaius, and that he was propositioning Victor right in front of her. He wonders if she even noticed.

Left alone for the time being, Victor looks up at the screen. The camera is on District Eleven, the brother and sister team. Sara, the girl, sits with her back against a wall, looking out a low window. They’ve taken shelter on the first story of a building near a fountain, and Sara is watching the circle of floodlights. Michele, with his head in her lap, is sound asleep. They both look worn, and Sara’s fingers tremble a little as she pets Michele’s hair. Victor wonders if they’ve found anything to eat. It seems like food is scarce in this arena, aside from the stash of protein bars Minami uncovered. Their lips are cracked like they haven’t had anything to drink, either. Sara’s fixed gaze makes more sense, now. She’s waiting to see if the fountain will turn back on.

He almost turns away again, but the picture on the screen shivers. Victor watches without realizing what he’s seeing. The cameras in the Arena are of exceptional quality, built to resist all kinds of punishment. He only realizes it’s not a bad stabilizer when Sara sits straight up, shaking her brother awake.

“Mickey! We have to move!” the sound of her voice, panicked and desperate, makes Victor realize what’s going on. The Gamemakers have triggered an earthquake.

“Georgi, are Mila and Yuri feeling this?” Victor asks, urgently into his earpiece. All over the pavilion, he sees other mentors doing the same. JJ and Isabella, who he’s been keeping a careful distance from, make a swift exit to go back to the main HQ building.

“No quake in their area yet,” Georgi says, a panicked edge to his tone. If they don’t feel the quake, they’ll both die when the building collapses. Victor remembers approving of their climb to the sixth floor. He’s cursing his own advice about high ground, now.

Michele wakes up, disoriented, and the two stagger away from their sheltered corner as the quake gets worse. A crack opens up on the building’s floor. Sara is pulling him urgently by the hand, moving as quickly as she can with him in tow. Dust from falling concrete puffs up in front of the lense of the camera. Victor hears a crack, hears Michele scream, hears Sara scream in response. Conversation cuts off in the pavilion, all eyes glued to the screen. When the dust clears, Sara is crouched over Michele’s head in the doorway of the building. Part of the ceiling has collapsed, and Michele’s leg is pinned.

A cannon fires. Victor hears a plate drop and shatter, but Michele’s groan a second later reveals it isn’t him that the cannon is for. Victor’s palms start to sweat.

“Who?” he asks Georgi urgently.

“District Nine,” Georgi says. “The girl. She was crushed by part of a falling building. The cannon woke Mila and Yuri— Victor, the screen.”

The screen is indeed on his tributes, now. They’re standing at the window far above the street, squinting into the darkness. Victor can tell when Yuri first feels the tremor under his feet.

“Run!” he shouts, grabbing Mila’s hand. They run for the stairwell as the shaking gets worse, taking the stairs two and three at a time. Mila’s foot slips out from under her and she falls down half a flight, sliding on her hip. Yuri pulls her to her feet and they keep running. A chunk of concrete falls from several storeys above them and smashes through the railing, leaving parts of the metal stair twisted.

They burst onto the darkened street, staggering. Yuri extends his claws and Mila grips her javelin like a lifeline. In the night vision cameras, Victor can see a lizard muttation raise its head, taking interest in the two fleeing figures in the dark. It bursts into motion, faster than Victor would have thought the things able to move.

Mila hears something in the dark and stabs with her javelin. It doesn’t strike home, but it makes the muttation more wary of them. The light of the fountain gleams from around the corner. The muttation makes for them again, but they round the side of the building and throw themselves into the light, the exposed center of the clearing, before turning to face the pursuing monster, weapons ready.

The thing hisses, pawing at its eyes, slithering backward away from the light. The ground lurches underneath them again, and there’s an unholy crack followed by a low rumble. Victor can’t see it with the camera focused tight on the two of them, but he’s willing to bet that was the sound of a building collapsing.

“Are you okay?” Yuri asks, turning to Mila. “You hit the stairs really hard.”

“Bruised and banged up, but I’ll live,” Mila says. She looks up at the dark sky. “Thirteen left.”

“Almost half of us gone in less than three days. Is that fast or slow?”

“Faster than some, slower than others. It’s good.” Mila sits down on the edge of the fountain. “I don’t want to try to find another building to stay in if they’re going to set off quakes.”

“Yeah,” Yuri says. “We’re sitting ducks here, though.”

“If anyone is out on the street, they’ll have more problems with those monsters than they can handle. Probably everyone is doing what we’re doing, and using the light from the fountains.”

She’s not wrong. The camera cycles through Leo and Guang Hong, sitting back to back inside the brightly-lit ring, to Minami in the fountain itself, crouched with his back against the statue. The group of Careers seems comfortable around a third fountain.

Sara Crispino of Eleven is frantically trying to dig her brother out from under the rubble, and that’s where the camera settles. They’re the most exciting story right now; if she doesn’t leave him, the muttations might get her. If she does, they’ll surely get her brother.

“I’m coming back to the room,” Victor says. “If they’re going to stay put, we can deliver our gift.”

“Looks like they aren’t moving. Do you want me to deploy now, or when you get back?” Georgi asks.

“Do it now. I’ll be back soon, but I should make another round of the room.”

Victor makes a slow circuit, shaking hands and promising to make another appearance before the Games are over. He has a reputation as a dedicated mentor who rarely leaves the media room while the Games are in progress, so to see him is a rare treat.

Victor takes special pleasure in saying goodnight to Gaius with a firm handshake and nothing more.

“I hope you know you can still come to me with anything you need,” Gaius says seriously. “Good luck with your tributes.”

“Thank you, you’re too kind,” Victor says, baring all his teeth in his smile.

Celestino Cialdini intercepts him on the way out the door. Voices nearby fade into murmurs while everyone tries to catch what they’ll say to each other. It’s not forbidden for mentors to speak to one another during the Games, but it’s unusual, and somewhat frowned upon. Victor and JJ, having spent the entire night staying far away from each other, is more the norm.

“Walk you back to HQ?” Celestino offers, and Victor can’t decline with this many ears on them, so he graciously accepts. They talk about everything but the Games while they walk up the stairs, not bothering to hide their faces, trading gossip they’ve learned about the who’s who they’ve been rubbing elbows with. Victor makes sure to snicker over Gaius’s makeup loud enough for a camera to hear, even if it makes him feel petty.

“Thanks for the company,” Victor says, when they pass through the doorway.

“Just a minute, if you don’t mind,” Celestino says. 

Victor does mind, but it tugs anyway, the debt he feels like he owes this man, and so Victor waits.

“I think most people have figured out what you’re trying to do, by now,” he continues. “It’s not hard to see how Mila protects him, and you’re more transparent than you think when you talk about him. You’re about to play that hand in a big way, and it’s going to lose you some favor. They love Mila. Yuri…”

“Well that’s how it is, isn’t it?” Victor asks, smiling so hard his face might crack. “People were always uncertain of— people are uncertain of Yuri because he has a good heart.”

Celestino hears his slip. They’re all so good at controlling their expressions, their emotions, that when Celestino looks away toward the wall, trying to smooth anguish from his face, Victor knows he isn’t acting.

“He’s not the same,” Celestino says thickly.

“Nobody will ever be the same.” Victor barely whispers it.

“As long as you _remember_ that.” Celestino shakes himself, forces his wide smile, and waves at Victor over his shoulder as he turns to walk away. “Good luck!”

Victor’s thoughts won’t stop churning around he walks back to District Ten’s media room. He doesn’t want to save Yuri because of the past, because of his failures before, because of the person he sees in his dreams and mourns in the space between moments. He wants to save Yuri for _Yuri_ , because Yuri wants to help his district, because Yuri is bright and kind at heart and has a life ahead of him, the same as every tribute, but he can’t save the other districts and Mila won’t save herself. He can save Yuri, and that’s what he’s going to do.

“Victor,” Georgi says urgently when he enters. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Did you send the gift?” Victor’s heart, already racing from the conversation with Celestino in the hallway, picks up even further.

“They have it, they just… well, see for yourself.”

Victor takes his jacket off, folding it over a chair. He feels too hot, nerves jangling where before he’d been settled and confident. The radiation had unsettled him, the earthquake rattled him, and Celestino set him off-balance entirely. And now his tributes are yelling at each other.

“—stupid, Yura,” Mila is saying. “Of course he sent it for you. Take the damn injection.”

“The note just says ‘ _A precaution_.’ How do you go from that to assuming it’s meant for me?” Yuri demands.

They’re sitting on the ground, in the circle of light spilling out around the fountain. Between them is the silver parachute, crumpled up on the ground. The box it had carried into the Arena is open, with an injection gun nestled inside, the kind meant to deliver medication simply and directly. Victor is glad to see that Georgi was sensible enough not to send them a syringe; those require fairly expert handling and the ability to find a vein.

“It’s meant for you, Yuri, trust me.”

“Maybe we should split the dose,” Yuri says. He reaches for the injection, but Mila grabs it and pulls it away.

“It’s like the inoculation guns we use for animals,” she says. “Those are always single-dose, and they go all at once. If you try to split it, you’ll waste it and make it useless.”

“I’m not going to just take it! We don’t even know what it’s for!”

“It looks expensive and they waited until we weren’t moving so they could make sure we got it! Obviously it’s important! Stop being stubborn and let me stick it in your neck!” Mila is trying to keep her voice down, but the frustration is clear.

“‘A precaution?’” Victor asks, knowing he shouldn’t be snapping at Georgi but unable to help himself. “What kind of direction is that?”

“The Gamemakers sent back my first four notes!” Georgi protests, distressed. “I wanted to tell them it was for the radiation, but they said no, they didn’t want that obstacle to become common knowledge and they didn’t trust Yuri not to spread the word.”

Victor grits his teeth. Once a tribute got a reputation for a noble heart, they made it as hard as possible on that tribute. He wants to be angry, but he can’t resent Yuri for not wanting to kill, for letting Minami go and trying to play fair. He’s doing his best to hold onto himself in there. Victor knows how hard that is.

“Look, go to sleep,” Yuri says, punching the water pack into an unfortunately lumpy pillow and laying down on the hard stone. “If you can even sleep with all this light. We’ll decide what to do with it in the morning.”

“We can’t both sleep. I’ll keep watch,” Mila says. Yuri mumbles something with his eyes closed. Victor wonders how he can possibly fall asleep so easily in the Arena, but then, watching Mila get up to pace the perimeter of the lit area, squinting into the dark, he remembers sleeping soundly during the Quell while Aster kept watch.

He wonders if they’re glad they have each other, if they have to go through this at all. His first Games had been hell. His second Games had been weathered with people he could trust, which made it a hell of an entirely different kind. It was one thing to fear every movement in the shadows. It was another to know that not everyone you protected or who protected you was going to make it out alive.

Mila sits on the edge of the fountain, her javelin balanced across her knees. It’s like their first night, in the highrise, Mila awake while Yuri is asleep, staring into her own soul while Yuri breathes evenly from a few feet away. 

Victor is starting to think of turning in himself, his full stomach from Spectator’s Row and the couple of cocktails he politely sipped with company catching up to him. He shakes himself awake again when Mila stands, her movements decisive. Slowly, she sets the javelin aside with a faint scrape. She leans forward and removes the injection gun from its box. Moving on her toes, trying to stay as silent as possible with boots on rough stone, she creeps to Yuri’s side.

Her movement is swift. She presses the injection gun to Yuri’s neck and pulls the trigger as his green eyes snap open. The medication vial is empty when he shouts and knocks the gun from her hand, sending it clattering across the stone. He’s on his feet, green eyes wild, shoving at her chest to get her away from him.

“What did you do?!” Yuri’s hand goes to his throat, where the skin is tender from the injection. “You don’t even know what that was!”

“I know it was for you, to keep something from happening to you, and that’s good enough for me. Keep your voice down,” Mila says, picking up her javelin and settling back down on the fountain like she’s going to ignore him.

“You always do this! You think you know best for me, you make decisions for me, you just— you know how I know that shot was for you? Because why the hell would Victor send anything for me? He hates me! You’re his favorite, he wants you to win!” Yuri’s face is pink, his voice barely strangled back from shouting.

Mila lets out a bitter laugh that worms between Victor's ribs and squeezes around his heart.

“You're kind of stupid, Yura. Didn't you notice how he was always giving you advice? How he coached you every chance he got? How he set everyone up to look at me, worry about me, and told you to fade into the background? How he tried to tell you it's not a _game_ , Yuri, that you won't come out of this with your hands clean?” Mila smiles, savage and dark. “Did he ask you to think about how you would kill me?”

Yuri flinches. His green eyes look feverish and hunted.

“I had a split second of thinking I might actually have a chance, here. Do you know when that was?” Mila doesn't wait for him to answer, barrels over his soft protest. “Right before you volunteered. In those few minutes between my name being called and you yelling your lungs out, I thought I could maybe pull it off. But _you_. You couldn't even wait one more year, you and your stupid fantasy. You accuse Victor of not wanting to give up the fame, but you know what? It's _you_ who's addicted to the idea of fame. So don’t try to tell me I'm his favorite, or that he sent that for me. It was for you. It was always for you, Yuri, everything we did.”

“This isn’t about Victor!” Yuri shouts, losing control of his volume at last. “This was never about Victor! You think I wanted to volunteer against you? Is that why you were so furious with me, why you’ve been looking at me like sometimes you can see the opportunity to take me out?”

“Don’t you _dare_ —” Mila starts, her face white and drawn with fury.

“I couldn’t wait another year even if I wanted to!” Yuri continues. His voice is bouncing off the buildings, carrying down the alleys. Victor sees movement on the infrared monitors, blue blobs that mean lizard muttations have heard the commotion.

“Yuri, quiet,” he whispers, but nobody is listening to him. All the eyes are on the main screen. Mila and Yuri are now the broadcast for the audience, the drama between the alliance too good not to show.

“Grandpa doesn’t _have_ another year! If he works in the slaughterhouse another _day_ it could kill him! I would have waited! I would have waited if I thought I wouldn’t lose him to save you, Mila, I—” Yuri’s shouting finally stops, his voice strangled off in his throat. He slings his arm over his eyes, mouth open for choked breaths, trying desperately not to cry. He knows the Capitol can see him.

“I didn’t know,” Mila says. The fury is gone from her, drained from her face and her frame. The tip of her javelin drags the ground. “I didn’t know he was sick.”

“It’s his back,” Yuri says, choked. “He can barely walk, he can barely stand most days, and they still have him working as hard as when mama died. If it gives out, I can’t— what I bring in alone isn’t enough.”

“You should have told me.” Mila drops her javelin with a ringing clatter and goes to him, reaching out to touch, but drawing her hands back like she’s not sure if he’ll let her.

“You should try,” he says. “We should split up, and you should try—”

“Never in a million years,” Mila says. She makes her acceptance sound easy. “What happens when we're the last ones left? No. I'm staying with you, and you’re going to win.”

“You're going to _die!_ ” Yuri bursts out, dropping his arm to glare at her, his face wet and his eyes red.

Mila smiles at him. She reaches out and takes his hand, pulling him in so she can hug him and ruffle his hair. Yuri swats at her, but it's half-hearted, and he’s mostly hiding his face from the camera. He cries so hard Victor starts to worry about him hyperventilating, clinging to Mila.

“Shh, shh. Yura, it's okay.”

“It's not,” Yuri sobs into her shirt, and for once, Victor agrees with him wholly. Nothing about this is okay.

“It has to be,” Mila says. She pats his back and rocks him a little as she holds him. Victor wants to tear it all down and get them both, run away to someplace they’ll never be found. He’s heard that there’s an ocean beyond District Seven, a vast stretch of water that goes off into oblivion. He doesn’t know what’s on the other side, but it has to be better than this.

Georgi is crying, his makeup running down his face. Victor’s throat sticks as he swallows. He has to get out of this room before he starts to do the same.

“Wake me at dawn,” he manages to get out, hoping his voice is level, and escapes into the sleeping quarters. Some of the staff are bunked here, but none of them wake or notice as he tumbles into a cot, presses a pillow to his face, and lets his body shake and his eyes stream the way he’s learned how—silently.

Georgi shakes him awake the next morning, and Victor comes up swinging. Georgi, an old hat at this, backs out of range before Victor can catch him with a fist in the face. Victor feels like his head is stuffed with gauze, like a band is squeezing around his eyes. His nose is clogged and his eyes feel crusty. Georgi hands him a pack of wet wipes and sits back down on the cot. Victor sees he’s already cleaned off and repaired his makeup. He’s wearing a harsh look today, black from neck to ankle, a great deal of spikes, with pale foundation and heavy black eyeliner. He looks like a ghost.

“In mourning already?” Victor croaks. “We haven’t reached the end, yet.”

Georgi doesn’t move to get up from the cot, and he has Victor pinned in place by the blanket. Victor’s instincts revolt as he tries to sit up and finds he can’t, ripping the blanket free from the other side and rolling to his feet. He’s not usually so on edge, but after last night, pushing everything back is getting harder and harder.

Which is why he wants to laugh when Georgi says, “I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what?”

“Hold it together. Watch something like what happened last night and keep going the next morning.”

“It’s the Games, Georgi. You haven’t done this with any of the other tributes, what makes Mila special that’s got you so upset?” Victor knows it’s a vicious dig, but he can’t help himself. For Georgi to decide _now_ that he’s getting emotionally squeamish over the death match he gleefully promotes every year honestly makes Victor want to strangle him.

“She’s just so good,” Georgi says, tearful already. “I understand how someone goes into the Games wanting to win, or wanting to and thinking they can’t, or knowing they can but being afraid they won’t. How does someone walk into the Arena knowing they won’t win, that they’re going to die, and _smile?_ ”

“I did,” Victor snaps. “You couldn’t ever hope to understand. Don’t try.”

He goes out to the media room rumpled and without any makeup on at all. Mila and Yuri are on the move already.

They aren’t the only ones.

The earthquake was around the perimeter of the Arena, collapsing the buildings in the outside ring and forcing the tributes closer to the center. The power plant, Victor notices with the cold feeling of irony settling into his bones, is completely inaccessible now. There are thirteen tributes left, and they’ve been pushed in closer to the Cornucopia like a pack of desperate animals. Someone wants these Games swift and bloody.

The anthem plays, and the portrait of the girl from District Nine is projected into the sky. Then the camera cycles through the rest of the tributes, catching the audience up on what they’ve been missing if they decided to sleep the night before.

Sara and Michele Crispino are on the move, but aren’t moving well. Michele’s leg is crushed and bleeding, wrapped crudely in what appears to be his shirt and twisted at an unnatural attitude. His sister is supporting him through the streets while she looks for something to splint his leg with. Victor looks at the injury critically. It would be better if they amputated below the knee, but few have the fortitude to do that to themselves, much less to a loved one. He’s going to bleed out or die of a blood infection soon, though, if she doesn’t do something.

Minami from District Twelve pulls himself shivering out of the fountain. It seems the Gamemakers turned the water back on last night. It’s a mixed blessing for him; the weather is mild, but his lips and fingernails look bluish. He’s been crouched there all night, and he hasn’t slept. He looks haggard and desperate. His warehouse with its stash of goods is also gone, so he’s on his own.

The pack of Careers seem to have killed one of the lizard muttations in the night, but they’ve butchered it ineptly. The intestines are split, and half the meat is poisoned. They’re attempting to start a fire, but can’t make more than weak smoke. The four of them argue over which direction to go, but ultimately decide to head back to the Cornucopia to search for more supplies.

Guang Hong and Leo are doing better, having found shelter in a sturdy area near one of the collapsed buildings. Leo’s wound is bandaged. They sleep curled up with each other, and Victor quickly looks away from the screen, the memories too raw for him to watch.

The fierce girl from District Five seems to have had the same idea as the Careers. As the camera pans to her, she’s crouched out of sight of the main fountain square. Victor wonders how long she’s been waiting there, in the vicinity of that area. He hasn’t seen her on camera at all. She’s watching the boy from District One root through the spoils. Her hands are bristling with small throwing knives, which it seems she’s scavenged from the wreckage. That situation is about to erupt into violence, but it’s far enough away from Mila and Yuri that Victor isn’t worried.

“Switch away from the main feed, back to our tributes,” he says. “We need to keep an eye on where the players are, now that the area to move in is smaller.”

“We may have to worry,” one of his analysts says. “They’re moving toward the Career pack, which is moving toward the boys from Six and Seven. They’re all coming together, and Twelve is converging on Eleven.”

Victor pulls up a chair and sits to watch, his hands clenched tight between his knees. Someone brings him breakfast and coffee again, and he eats, tense. Mila and Yuri aren’t talking as they move, so he’s not sure where they’re going or what their goal is, besides avoiding being a stationary target.

The cannon fires. Victor glances down at the main feed and sees that the girl from Five is victorious but bleeding from a deep wound in her side. The boy from District One lies dead on the stone, one knife sticking out of his shoulder and another protruding from his throat. She must have hit him with the first knife from a distance and come in close to finish the job. It was a miscalculation; the bloodied blade in the boy’s hand found its way into her side. She falls slowly to her knees, gasping for breath and glaring as the hovercraft comes to claim his body. It won’t be much longer for her, either.

He returns his focus to the main screens, watching Yuri creep forward through the quiet alleys of broken concrete and shattered glass. Mila walks at his back. The cameras aren’t showing the other tributes, now, so he doesn’t know how close or far away they are from the rest. He glances at the public broadcast again, and sees the girl from District Five leaving a wide trail of blood as she drags herself away from the Cornucopia. She doesn’t quite make it to shelter before she collapses, unmoving. A few silent minutes of bleeding later, and the cannon fires again.

Yuri and Mila stop, settling down against the side of a building. They won’t know who has died until that evening, when the portraits are broadcast into the sky.

“Eleven,” Mila says.

“Not many of us left,” Yuri answers. “Do you want to keep going?”

“Staying in one place got the Gamemakers to send an earthquake. If we keep moving, try to take shelter near the fountains at night, we have a better chance.”

“We should move in a circle,” Yuri says, looking back down the street they’ve come from. “We can keep to the small streets during the day and double back for the fountain at night. The lizard things won’t attack us in the light.”

“That we know of,” Mila says. “I don’t like staying in the open like that, we’re too visible. It’s bad enough we can’t use the buildings.”

“Mr. Nikiforov,” one of his staff members says tentatively. “We should switch to main monitor.”

“Let me see,” Victor says. He doesn’t want to cut away from Mila and Yuri planning, because he doesn’t like being in the dark. “Someone keep up with their feed and give me a report.”

The picture changes. It’s Sara and Michele Crispino, but the camera isn’t only focused on them. In the split screen, Minami Kenjirou from Twelve is closing in on them, quietly, from the alley that runs parallel to the street.

Sara has Michele laid out on the ground, his mangled leg sticking out beside him. Her hands hover over the bandage, tears in her eyes and streaming down her cheeks.

“Did the shot help?” she asks, and Michele nods.

“I don’t feel it,” he says. “I know it’s bad, but I can drag it along while I don’t feel it.”

“We won’t get any more of that.” Sara reaches out to take Michele’s hand, dragging him up on his good leg and putting his arm back over her shoulder. “We have to get to the Cornucopia and see if there’s anything that can help, anything that hasn’t been taken yet.”

“Do you know where we’re going?” Michele asks. It sounds like he’s trying to be gentle with her. Sara doesn’t like that, from the way she bites her lip savagely, her eyes narrowing.

“I’ve got a good idea.”

“I know the way,” Minami says, stepping out from between the buildings. He’s behind them, and Sara whirls around, off-balance on her knees. Victor waits for Minami to strike then, but he doesn’t. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

“District Twelve,” Sara says. It doesn’t look like she has any weapons. Minami doesn’t look like he does either, but Victor remembers the stone knife in his boot. She stands over her brother and faces off with Minami, her face grim.

“District Eleven,” Minami nods to her. “I know how to get to the Cornucopia. I’ll take you, if you come with me.”

“Why?” Sara’s eyes narrow. “If you know the way, go by yourself.”

“I’m small and I don’t have any weapons,” Minami says, spreading his arms. “How far do you think I’ll get if the Careers are still camping out there?”

“How many of them are left alive?” Sara demands.

“I don’t know who the cannon fired for,” Minami says.

“Make a guess.”

“There’s a group of four travelling in a pack.” Minami lowers his hands to his sides. He doesn’t go for the boot knife. “They were hunting tributes, but would come back to the Cornucopia occasionally.”

“Two against four aren’t odds I like,” Sara says.

“What about the odds of your brother bleeding out before you find your way there on your own?” Minami looks down at Michele, who grips the knee of his ruined leg and scowls back.

“Don’t go with him, Sara,” he says. “We can get there.”

“He’s going to die. Pretty soon, if you don’t get to where you need to be.”

“Mickey’s coming with us, then.” Sara leans down to pick him up.

“He’ll slow us down,” Minami argues. “We can be there and back before nightfall. We aren’t far.”

“He’s lying.” Michele resists Sara’s attempts to pick him up, shoving her hands away. “We moved for nearly two days away from the Cornucopia.”

“How do you know we’ve been going in a straight line? All the buildings look the same! Did you grow a map in your head when I wasn’t looking?” Sara puts her arms under Michele’s and heaves, but he isn’t cooperating.

“I know—Sara, don’t turn your back on him!”

Minami’s lunge doesn’t take Victor by surprise, but it does the Crispino twins. Sara drops Michele and he falls to the street with a grunt, his head cracking off the pavement. She twists, barely avoiding the full thrust of Minami’s knife as she jumps away. It scrapes along her back, opening a gash in her shirt and leaving a long cut.

Michele reaches for Minami as he dances out of range, but he’s still dazed from the blow to the head, and he only barely brushes Minami’s ankle. Sara rolls behind a broken chunk of concrete, fallen from the towering building overhead in the earthquake. Minami takes a step and a half toward her, then turns on his heel and throws himself on Michele. They struggle for the knife. Minami kicks at Michele’s broken leg, but Michele doesn’t react. Whatever his mentor sent him for the pain is blocking the nerves entirely.

Sara emerges from her cover, armed with a rock, and sprints for where Minami and her brother struggle over the stone knife. Three steps and she’s on them, swinging the rock in her fist. Minami throws up his arm, takes the blow on his shoulder and cries out, his grip on Michele loosening. He throws Minami off and levers himself up on his elbows, searching for a weapon.

Minami is back on his feet. He swipes for Sara with the knife. She swings at him in return. Her blow goes wild, her momentum carrying her forward into tripping. Minami grabs her by the hair. His knife plunges between her ribs.

“Sara!” Michele screams. She’s bleeding, blood streaming down her back, especially as Minami wrenches the knife free. He’s breathing hard, his face twisted, but he isn’t trembling in shock like Victor would have expected from a first kill. He wonders about the girl from his district, the one with the sickness. He wonders if he didn’t just see what he wanted to see when the boy from District One stepped over her body at the Cornucopia. Minami would have been closer to her than anyone.

Minami doesn’t hesitate to descend on Michele either, renewing their struggle for the knife. They roll over and over, and as the cannon sounds for Sara, Michele gets his hands around Minami’s neck with a scream of grief and triumph. Minami gropes for his knife, inches away on the ground. His fingers brush it. His eyes are fogging over as he manages to close his hand around it and plunge it into Michele’s chest.

The cannon fires. Michele has collapsed on Minami. Victor can’t tell who it’s been fired for until he hears a ragged, choked gasp and sees Michele’s body heave unnaturally. Minami rolls out from under him, gasping and clutching at his throat, bruises in a neat ring around his neck. He stays on his knees, heaving for breath, as the camera slowly fades away from him.

It stops on Mila and Yuri. Victor’s breath stops in his throat.

The camera they’re looking through is positioned behind his tributes. They’re crouched behind a low, concrete wall that looks like it used to lead to a loading dock. To their right is a chasm, yawning down into a structure below the sagging building. To their left is a narrow alley, and in front of them is the pack of four Careers, moving low and quiet, like they’re stalking prey.

The screen splits into thirds. One camera behind District Ten, one camera from above watching the four tributes on the hunt, and one camera inside the crumbling space where Leo and Guang Hong were taking shelter, still asleep, easy targets. They must not have scouted the area thoroughly in the dark, because at this angle, from this alleyway, it’s easy to see them leaned up against the wall. The only thing that’s saved them so far is that none of the four Careers seem to have distance weapons.

Yuri moves, like he’s going to pick up a rock from the small pile of them at his feet. Mila grabs his wrist, and from the way Yuri tries to tug loose, her grip is bruising. Mila shakes her head, scowling furiously at him, and Yuri immediately gropes with his other hand. The rocks stir together. They both freeze.

None of the tributes ahead of them turn around. They’re closing in around the building, the girl from Two directing her companions silently to circle the building and cover the exits. Yuri grabs for another rock, struggling against Mila’s grip. She’s shaking her head, trying to hold his wrists still so he can’t grab or throw.

“Mila,” Yuri whispers, near-silently, his face red with the effort of fighting back with her.

“No,” she whispers back. “What are you thinking?”

Yuri glances down the alley again and freezes. The boy from District Four turns to look over his shoulder, frowning. Mila and Yuri duck down flat behind the wall, barely breathing. He doesn’t seem to notice the movement.

“Four against two,” Yuri whispers. “And then it’ll be four against two with us. I’m evening the odds.”

It’s not why he’s doing it, Victor is almost certain. He’s doing it because he hates the Capitol, because the Careers _are_ the Capitol, because four-on-two isn’t fair any way you look at it, and it definitely isn’t fair when the two aren’t awake to see the danger. It’s a reckless, dangerous move, but it’s one that’s so _Yuri_ it makes Victor’s chest ache.

Mila relaxes her grip on Yuri’s hand for only a moment. Maybe it’s relief they weren’t seen, or maybe for a split second, he sees the point of his argument. It’s enough for Yuri to grab the rock and hurl it as hard as he can.

“Hey!” he shouts, grabs Mila’s wrist, and takes off running in the opposite direction.

“Yuri you idiot!” Mila yells, but she doesn’t say anything else as they run, the sound of pounding feet behind them. The Career group has split up; District Two attacks Leo and Guang Hong as they come up fighting, roused by Yuri’s shout, and District Four pursues Ten.

They run. Victor doesn’t know if they’re paying attention to where they’re going. They aren’t moving in a straight line, zig-zagging through driveways and squeezing between buildings, dodging down alleys. The tributes pursuing them are dogged, better runners than either Mila or Yuri. Their legs are strong, coming from the fishing district. They have good stamina and they’re armed. 

Victor distantly hears Georgi hyperventilating in his ear. Mila runs into a building, pulling Yuri after her. She hauls him stumbling over a broken floor and out the other side, across one of the main streets that leads to the Cornucopia at the center, and into another one.

“Earthquakes!” Yuri gasps.

“Shut up!” Mila answers.

They’re losing the tributes from Four, but they have no way of knowing it. They’re also getting closer and closer to where District Eleven’s tributes lie dead, and Minami lies gasping.

Thankfully, they halt before they get there. They’re inside a one-story building, a long concrete rectangle separated into sections. The glass that likely used to be doors and windows is shattered. If another earthquake happens, they can escape quickly.

They’re trying to breathe quietly, taking slow sips of water.

“Did we—”

“Shh!” Mila says, crouching down. Victor hears what she hears a second later—the movement of feet on pavement.

The boy from District Four is trying to be silent, but he doesn’t quite manage it, his boots dragging on the ground as he enters the wide, empty lot that sits in front of Yuri and Mila’s shelter. Mila moves at an inching, excruciating pace, trying to free her javelin for a throw. She has the wrong angle to do anything useful.

“Stay put,” Yuri whispers. “Trust me.”

“Yuri—!” Mila hisses, but he’s already running. He isn’t trying to stay quiet, and the boy from District Four sees him move. When he starts to run, Yuri whirls to face him, tapping the palms of his gloves so the claws shoot out.

“Come get me!” he shouts, spreading his arms like he’s creating a target.

He is creating a target, and thankfully Mila has caught on to what he’s doing. She eases into position, standing slowly from her crouch as soon as the other boy’s back is to her. The boy from District Four isn’t a complete idiot; he suspects something, so he slows as he gets within striking distance of Yuri, starting to circle him.

He doesn’t get more than a couple steps before Mila lets the javelin fly, piercing him from back to front. He looks down at the weapon in comical surprise, sinking to his knees, his eyes clouding over in death before he falls to the ground.

“Not very fair to hit someone in the back,” Mila says, eyeing Yuri. “Isn’t that what it was about back there, with the boys from Six and Seven?”

The cannon booms while Mila is wrenching her javelin free. Yuri stares down at the blank eyes of the boy from District Four, his face pale. His mouth works, and he spits on the ground next to the boy’s face.

“They’re as good as Capitol,” he says derisively, and Victor bites back a groan. He doesn’t need Yuri insulting his sponsors on the public broadcast! A quick glance at the feed, though, shows his fears are misplaced; the camera is on Leo and Guang Hong, fighting back to back for their lives.

“They’re forced into it like we are,” Mila says. “Only difference is they’re brainwashed from birth to think they want it.”

Yuri shrugs, looking uncomfortable. “Look, it wasn’t right, all of them sneaking up on Six and Seven when they were helpless. I know they don’t care about fair, or anything, I know it’s stupid to care about it I just… can’t stop myself. I don’t want to be like them.” His eyes flick down to the dead Career on the pavement. “They think it’s fun to kill us off, you know? Probably take bets over who can get the most. If I’m like that, or even if I sit by and let it happen, what does that make me?”

“Smart enough to stay out of things and not get yourself killed,” Mila says, her voice dry as a bone, but she’s not rebuking him. Her eyes are a little sad, a little wistful. Victor wonders if she’s thinking about what could have been if neither of them were here.

“Yeah, yeah, always nagging,” Yuri says. He’s smiling at her. The hovercar arrives above them to pick up the body of the dead tribute and they both startle, like they had forgotten the corpse was there. Desensitization. Victor remembers it happening to him, too.

The cannon fires again. They both turn to look behind them, back the way they’d come.

“Who do you think…?” Yuri asks. Victor looks down at the broadcast.

It’s the boy from District Two, impaled through and through by Guang Hong’s spear. The boy is trying to lever it free, his freckles standing out vividly on his face. Leo fights at his back, swinging his hatchet to counter the female tribute’s pair of long knives. He moves heavily on his one good leg, his reach and the heavy stroke of his weapon his only advantages.

Guang Hong gets the spear free. He turns, the two of them a united front. The girl from Two looks between them, both of them pale and trembling. Her lips are cracked, and Victor sees that between the gasps she’s barely sweating. She’s dehydrated. They all are, but she’s been running, tracking, and fighting through it.

She turns on her heel and runs away. Guang Hong lets out a breath that’s more of a hiss of relief. Leo collapses to the pavement.

Guang Hong is at his side in an instant. His staff, despite themselves, are riveted to the public feed. Victor sees it first, the thing that makes them all gasp in dismay. Even if they’re supposed to be District Ten’s people, the drama is too good not to enfold them.

Victor tears his eyes away from the public feed, fighting back memories. He can smell blood, taste it coating his tongue. He can feel a hand in his, getting colder, losing its grip. He has to shake it off.

“Oh, look out!” Georgi cries from next to him, and Victor’s eyes dart around the main screen for Mila and Yuri, trying to find what he saw.

The girl from District Four has caught up with them, and she’s closing. She has nothing but a wicked little switchblade, but if neither of them hear her, she’s only going to need that wicked little switchblade.

The public broadcast is forgotten. The staff scurry back to their stations, bracing for whatever comes next.

Yuri turns. It doesn’t seem like he hears the girl, or that he somehow senses she’s coming. He’s just looking behind them as they cross the open lot. He sees District Four coming at a sprint and shouts, extending his claws. 

The girl leaps for Mila. Yuri flings himself at her. Georgi lets out a little shriek that sounds like it comes from far away, despite the ringing Victor can feel in his eardrum.

The first strike is hers, skidding off the hardened leather of the gauntlets. They go down, Yuri landing heavily on his back. She stabs. He rolls. The knife slices him open on the back of his bicep, where the gauntlet doesn’t protect. Blood splashes the pavement. Yuri screams, enraged, and strikes with his gauntlet.

The strike takes her across the eyes, raking her from temple to cheekbone. The claws are razors, her face laid open to the bone, ruined in one stroke. Yuri kicks her away, screaming and rolling and clutching her face. He scrambles back, feet skidding along the asphalt, bright blond hair spattered with blood. He’s soaked in it, his sleeve dyed crimson and his face flecked red.

The blow across the eyes won’t kill the female tribute from Four. She’s writhing, her body contorting in pain, shrieking. It’s grating. The sound fills the media room, bouncing off the room. They’re the public broadcast now, for certain. Everyone will want to see what the golden boy will do now.

“Yuri,” Mila says. She has her eyes on the Career. Yuri is sitting on the wrong side for her to see his wound. He doesn’t move, staring, his green eyes hollow and hunted in his face.

“You! You killed me!” the Career screams, rolling up to her knees. “Do it!”

Yuri shakes his head once.

The girl can’t see him, of course. She’s groping in front of herself, hands blindly seeking, scrabbling for her knife or for an enemy.

“Kill me! You’ve done it already!” the girl throws herself forward, like she can find Yuri better that way. He scrambles back. She hears him, tries to move after him, and is brought up short by the point of Mila’s javelin at her throat.

“Yuri,” Mila says again.

“No,” Yuri says. “I won’t.”

“You coward,” the girl spits, her fingernails digging into the pavement. “Kick me my knife and I’ll do it myself.”

Mila looks from Yuri to the switchblade, then to the girl. The Gamemakers don’t like suicide, but this is the kind of show they live for. They won’t get in anyone’s way while this is playing out. In fact, instead of the usual fanfare, a small red marquee scrolls by on the bottom of the screen, informing viewers that they have made the Final Six— the Final Five, actually, since so many tributes have died in such close succession.

“Do it.” The girl pulls herself up onto her knees. “Or give me the knife.”

Yuri’s breathing is so loud he’s wheezing.

“Someone get me his vital signs,” Victor says. His voice falls into the silence of the room. Nobody moves. Victor doesn’t repeat himself.

Mila kicks the knife to the girl from District Two. She cuts herself on the blade before she finds the handle, and doesn’t hesitate for a second before drawing it across her own throat.

Yuri makes a sound, then, an aborted word, a denial. It sounds fragile in his throat. He reaches out with his wounded arm and hisses between his teeth.

“You’re hurt?” Mila asks, ignoring both the boom from the cannon and the arrival of the hovercraft as she drops her javelin and runs to Yuri. “Yura, you should have said. This is bad.”

“She,” Yuri croaks. Mila digs her fingers into his wound. He jerks, wrenching away from her. She dodges his claws and he makes a sound of revulsion, fingers going to the fastenings.

All things considered, Mila slapping him is the best thing she can do under the circumstances. It stops him dead, like she’s knocked him out for a moment, but Victor knows she wouldn’t hit him so hard. It’s about getting his attention.

“You hag!” Yuri shouts, and Victor suspects the words pop out of his mouth because they’re automatic. He blinks, his eyes getting a little clearer, less blank with terror. “She got me in the arm.”

“I can see that,” Mila says. Now that the body is gone, Yuri seems to be waking back up from his shock-induced stupor. “You had a meltdown.”

“I didn’t remember I had them,” Yuri says, hefting the claws. He touches the palms to retract them. “I remembered, but I didn’t remember. They’re like a part of my hand. My hand isn’t sharp. I would have punched her. Without these.”

He moves to take them off again, and Mila grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him.

“You saved me,” she says, her face inches from Yuri’s. “I would be dead if you hadn’t seen her. She was going for me.”

“Because you and Victor conspired to paint a giant target on your back,” Yuri says bitterly.

“Better me than you,” Mila says. “Hold still. We have to stop that from bleeding, somehow.”

They do. The gash isn’t immediately fatal, but it won’t take Yuri long to start feeling the effects of blood loss. Mila rips the bottom of Yuri’s shirt, tearing strips until she can tie them over the wound. It’s an imperfect bandage, but she’s careful to wind the arm up tight. Victor hopes it’ll be enough.

Victor counts the tributes in his head. Guang Hong. Leo, though Victor doesn’t think he’ll last much longer. Mila. Yuri. The girl from District Two. Minami.

It’s Minami that unsettles Victor the most. Guang Hong will be out for revenge, on the hunt for the girl from Two. Minami only had to take out the other tributes.

“Has anyone seen Twelve?” he asks.

“Twelve hasn’t been on the monitors since he eliminated Eleven,” an analyst responds.

A staffer hands him a pad with Yuri’s vital signs on it. He’s losing blood, but not as rapidly as Victor feared. He’ll lose more as they go on the move, which they’re keen to do, now that it’s so close to nightfall.

He doesn’t think the Gamemakers will trigger another earthquake, not with so few tributes left. He also doesn’t think they have anything to fear from the lizard muttations anymore, but he would rather discount the earthquake than those monsters. He’s glad to see his tributes have similar thoughts, taking shelter in a building with an intact door, and without windows low enough to the ground that something might crawl into them.

Yuri falls asleep distressingly fast. Mila looks grim as she checks the bloody bandage, and Victor looks at his data again. Yuri’s heart rate is slower.

“Georgi,” Victor says. He knows he sounds bad when Georgi doesn’t respond, but gently turns him by the elbow until he can look Victor in the eye. Until Victor isn’t staring at the screens anymore. “Yuri needs medicine. Something to stop the bleeding.”

Georgi hesitates, looking over at his favorite section of the staff, the little gossip corner.

“We’re not getting any new donations, Victor.” He’s trying to keep the panic out of his voice. “Something like that will be so expensive this late in the Games.”

“Why aren’t we getting any new donations?” Victor asks. He knows the answer. He doesn’t want to know the answer. Georgi looks miserable, that horrible death-mask makeup doing nothing to conceal the failure written across his face.

“The sponsors wanted to back Mila. They feel like we pushed her as the tribute to win and now we’re shoving Yuri at them and asking them to accept second best. Everyone is talking about her kill count. She’s at _four_ now. That’s unheard of for a tribute that isn’t a Career.”

Rage nearly blinds Victor to the room, the staff, the surveillance no doubt watching their every move. The Capitol hates gambits like this. It was a risk, but Victor had been so sure they could play it right, that he wouldn’t have to tip his hand until near the end of the Games. He’d overestimated how much the sponsors would love Yuri, underestimated how much they would love Mila, miscalculated how much contempt they both had for the Games and the Capitol and any sense of playing to their bloodthirsty narrative.

“Find out how much,” Victor says, because if he has to do this, he needs to know what he needs to beg for.

“We’ll never be able to afford it,” Georgi says, reaching out to take his hands. Victor shakes him off.

“Find out,” he repeats.

Mila sits awake through the night. Victor should sleep while his tributes are in one place, but he can’t. Hours pass, creeping by as he watches his tributes. A cannon booms sometime in the night. Victor doesn’t look. He knows it’s for Leo, the boy from Seven, and memories can’t take him away right now. He has something more important to do.

“It’s too much,” Georgi says, when he comes back in.

“It’s not too much for who I have in mind,” Victor says. “Give me the information.”

“Call me,” Georgi answers, as he hands Victor the pad.

Victor swallows. Georgi likes to pretend he doesn’t know about this aspect of what comes after the Games, but Victor has never hidden it from him. He takes the earpiece out of his suit jacket and lays it on the table quietly.

“Not this time,” he says, and leaves the media room at a brisk stride.

He doesn’t stop for a photo op. He’s disheveled, his shirt wrinkled, his tie pulled loose. He’s never looked less like the Capitol expects him to, and though the press shouts the usual questions, they’re far more interested in reaction pieces from the rich and famous of the crowd.

Victor has never had a colder reception than the one he receives in the pavilion on Spectator’s Row. He’s hated being in their crosshairs since he was sixteen, but now that he needs it most, not a single one of them will deign to talk to him. The sponsors he approached before avoid him entirely, and the only people who will approach him are the silent Avoxes.

He takes a glass of champagne, glancing at the Avox because he always does, has never been able to stop seeing them as people. He finds himself staring into dark, familiar eyes, and grips the stem of the glass so hard he fears it will break in his hand. Otabek, the boy who had tried to escape, who Yuri had almost made friends with. Avoxes aren’t supposed to stare people down, but the way Otabek’s eyes slide from Victor to the monitor feels deliberate.

Victor drains the glass in one go and sets it back on the serving tray. He can’t nod to Otabek with so many people around him, but his resolve is set. Otabek had looked at Victor like he trusted him to get Yuri out alive. He’s Yuri’s only lifeline. If this is what it takes, it’s what he’ll do.

Gaius usually makes space in his circle as soon as Victor arrives, sliding an arm around his waist and leaning in too close. This time, Victor is left standing just within Gaius’s line of sight, outside of the conversation, ignored by its participants. He’s invisible, like the staff and the Avoxes and everyone else that the rich and powerful of the Capitol don’t see as people.

“Victor,” Gaius finally says, in a tone like the one he’s used to summon the help on occasions when Victor has been at his sprawling estate. “What was it you needed?”

Victor knows what he wants. He licks his lips, lets his hair fall into his face, looks up through his lashes. He doesn’t have to fake it, much, when he puts a plea in his eyes.

“May I speak with you, please?” he asks. Normally he wouldn’t have the time of day for Gaius’s cold shoulder, but he remembers the remark he dropped in front of the cameras yesterday. Something about eyeliner not covering up crow’s feet. If there is one thing the powerful people of the Capitol hate being reminded of, it’s their mortality.

Gaius stares him down. His green peacock suit has given way to something in a subtle pearlescent shimmer, a loose shirt that’s gathered at the sleeves with another one of those not-slimming waistcoats over the top. His makeup is in silver today. It washes out the blue of his eyes, turning them from pale sky into icy chips. 

“I suppose I could spare a minute to walk with my favorite Victor,” Gaius says, smiling at him. He loves that pun. There’s little of his usual charm in that smile, though Victor takes his offered arm nevertheless.

They leave the pavilion, but the Games are inescapable. The massive screens on either side of the huge crowd loom. Victor didn’t expect activity this late, but there’s movement on the screen. With the Games on the final five tributes, the lizard muttations are gone. It’s down to the tributes, now.

Guang Hong of District Six holds his spear lightly in his right hand. There’s more light in the Arena than there was on the first night; the Gamemakers are giving them artificial moonlight to move by. It means Panem can watch, breathless, as the boy from District Six tracks down the girl who killed his friend. Lover. Whatever they were to each other, if they had time to be anything to each other at all besides desperate companions.

Gaius pulls him behind a decorative hedge. The low barrier here that keeps the rest of the Capitol away from the VIPs is shoved right up against the front facade of a building. They’re sheltered on three sides, and it’s dark.

“Gaius,” Victor says, and gets down on his knees.

Gaius’s hand is in his hair, fingers twisted, pulling sharply at Victor’s scalp. He uses the grip to tilt Victor’s head back. His throat is bared. Victor’s hands dig into his own thighs, fighting with hard-earned instinct. He needs to let Gaius do whatever he wants. Yuri needs him to.

“Not too good for me after all, are you?” Gaius asks him. Victor’s heart rate feels like it’s doubled. Gaius definitely caught the throwaway little line Victor desperately regrets indulging in, now. “You’ve been such a pretty little performer, never hard to look at, always doing what you’re supposed to, those put-together suits and that smile that always looks like you’re hiding something.”

“Gaius, I’m sorry, what I said was cruel and I shouldn’t have.” Victor would say the same thing a thousand times over if he didn’t have to beg for Yuri’s life.

“Victor, darling,” Gaius says, tipping his head back down enough to make eye contact. “You actually thought you could be on the same level as all of those people you played. I can’t believe all it took for you to go soft was a pretty face with some fire behind it. I thought you went for the meek, dark-haired type.”

It’s a bolt meant to wound, and it strikes Victor like one of Mila’s javelins, piercing him through. Gaius watches his carefully constructed expression fold, smirks at the way Victor’s mouth trembles with the effort of holding back, not only the memory, but the vicious urge to strike back, to wound where he’d been wounded. Only Victor was a tribute, twice over, and he doesn’t trust himself not to straight for Gaius’s throat.

“He needs something for that gash on his arm,” Victor says quietly, forcing himself to stay motionless at Gaius’s feet. “Something to seal it, stop the bleeding and stop him from leaving a trail.”

“Mm. Otherwise that clever little thing from Twelve is going to take it, don’t you think?”

The thought has crossed Victor’s mind. He’s certain that Guang Hong is too emotional to think straight, and too enraged to stop before the girl from Two is dead, even if he dies in the process. Which would leave Mila and Yuri to deal with Minami, and all his cleverness.

“I should tell you to clean up your own mess,” Gaius says, like Victor has made some kind of social misstep instead of traded the life of one human for another. “If your precious little tiger bleeds dry, it’ll be her and Twelve. I like the odds of her winning that match-up. It would certainly make the sponsors happy, the ones who gave you the cold shoulder so badly you came crawling to me.”

“Gaius,” Victor whispers. “Gaius, please.”

“Tell me you came to me because I’m the only one who can save you,” Gaius says, clearly relishing this. Victor has never bent for him like this before. He’s always done exactly what Gaius asked with a professional air, an exchange of a service for a promise of patronage. This is different. Raw. Too much of himself put on the line.

“You’re the only person who can save him.” Victor winces at his own slip of the tongue. It’s not quite what Gaius wanted him to say, but he doesn’t seem to care as long as he can make Victor humiliate himself. 

“Tell the truth about yourself and I’ll let you do something nice for me. Then we can talk about what you need for that boy of yours,” Gaius says. “Say you’re District trash and you’ll never measure up to us.”

Victor’s muscles lock into a near-rigor. He can’t make those words come out of his mouth. The Capitol is poison, it’s beautiful and toxic, it’s been killing him inside since he was sixteen, and even if he saves Yuri’s life he’s dooming him to the same poison. He can’t let these words come out of his mouth.

“If you aren’t going to do what I want,” Gaius says, his voice silky smooth and skin-crawling, “you’re not of any use to me at all. Do you want to be useful to me, Victor? So you can get what you need?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me what you are.”

“I’m District trash.” Victor closes his eyes. He can’t look at the satisfaction on Gaius’s face. “I’ll never measure up to you.”

“Open your mouth.”

Victor does his best not to think. He lets Gaius use his mouth, rougher than he was even in the storage closet only a handful of days ago. Then, the choking was incidental. Now, Gaius holds Victor down on his cock, unable to breathe and gagging, until Victor’s lungs start to burn and his rigid acceptance slides into real panic. Only then does Gaius push him back, let him gasp for breath for only a couple of moments, and pull him down again.

He’s talking. Victor doesn’t listen. Gaius has never been this cruel with him, but Victor has always sensed this, the scorned man beneath the powerful veneer. When Gaius’s ego is challenged, it seems, he snaps.

The only blessing is that Gaius doesn’t make a mess of him this time, though he does hold Victor down hard when he comes until Victor thinks he might actually lose consciousness. He chokes on the air when Gaius releases him, shoving him away. Victor lets himself fall, curling up in the grass beneath the hedge because Gaius wants to feel powerful and needs to know that he’s won.

“You’ll think twice about insulting me again, I think,” Gaius says, buttoning himself back up. “You still owe me, but I understand I won’t be able to collect until after the Games are over.”

“Gaius,” Victor rasps, sudden panic seizing him.

“Don’t worry that gorgeous head, Victor. I’ll get you what you need in time for you to save his miserable life. Then you’ll owe me double, won’t you?”

Victor nods, mute, still laying in the grass. He needs Gaius to think he’s won so thoroughly that Victor will do whatever he asks, whenever he asks, no matter what it is. He can take this. It’s not the worst thing he’s ever done in his life.

Gaius clicks his tongue, suddenly conciliatory, and crouches next to Victor to stroke the hair out of his face. He pulls his case of wet wipes out of the pocket of his jacket and dabs at the corners of Victor’s eyes, cleaning up the tears he shed while sucking Gaius off.

“Thank you,” Victor murmurs, looking up at Gaius through his lashes again.

“Dangerous thing,” Gaius says, fond. “Get up, we have to go back. I have an Arena gift to spend an extraordinary amount of money on. You’re lucky I like you so much.”

Victor is very, very lucky Gaius likes him so much, even though the sour taste in the back of his mouth makes him nauseous. It doesn’t take him long to select what Yuri will need, but the price has his eyes going wide, even though he’s used to how much everything in the Capitol costs by now.

Gaius chuckles at his expression, and for a moment all the cruelty between them is forgotten. Victor is sixteen again, on the arm of a handsome man who indulges his rapid-fire questions about the Capitol. There was a time when Gaius was kind to him. Victor squeezes Gaius’s arm a little, smiling up at him, putting some of the real gratitude he feels into his face.

“Thank you.”

“Kiss me goodbye, now,” Gaius says, and the moment evaporates. They’re surrounded. There are cameras everywhere. If he kisses Gaius now, there will be no question what he’s done to gain the gift he’s about to send into the Arena. It’s not an unusual practice, but it isn’t supposed to be an open one.

Victor can spot mentors around the pavilion, his colleagues, such as they are. Celestino and Minako are of course still there, though they aren’t looking in his direction. The mentor from District Six, Cao Bin, is. His gaze is heavy on Victor as he stretches up on his toes and presses a kiss to Gaius’s mouth.

Gaius doesn’t let him get away with a soft peck. He puts his hand on Victor’s back, his fingers spread wide obviously possessive. When he finally releases Victor, he lets his hand slide low enough to skim over the top of Victor’s thigh. It’ll all be on video, of course, and Victor will see it on the cover of a dozen tabloids and in the behind-the-Games highlight clips for weeks to come.

He leaves the pavilion with his chin raised, forcing himself to put one foot in front of the other and walk sedately back to HQ. He can hear whispers at his back. He ignores them. It’s only his pride, and he can lose that. The tradeoff is Yuri’s life.

It’s quiet enough in the media room that the sound of Mila and Yuri’s breathing from the screen is overly loud. Yuri is barely awake, his eyes drooping heavily. Victor can’t tell in the light whether the bandage has soaked through, but Mila is staring at him fiercely, her mouth pressed into a tight line. She unhooks the hose from the water pack and puts it in his mouth. Yuri tries to draw from it, but bats it away.

“Dry,” he says.

He struggles to get the pack off his back. Mila stops him from moving and sits him up like a doll, working the straps off his shoulders. She opens it, tipping it up to let the last few drops roll into her mouth. They aren’t dehydrated, like the other tributes who haven’t had water for the past three days. They’ll last longer and they’re still at fighting strength.

“I’m glad you went in,” Mila says. “I never said. It was a smart move.”

“It was a stupid move that lucked out,” Yuri says. His voice is faint, but the usual irritation is all there in his tone. “I should have listened to Victor.”

Georgi snorts softly and Victor realizes he’s been watching from the doorway, lurking, avoiding the uncomfortable gazes of the staff. Georgi still looks him in the eye, hooking his arm through Victor’s and tugging him down to the main floor by the elbow.

“They’re not far from the Cornucopia,” Georgi tells him. “We’re ready to deploy whenever you are.”

“Do it,” Victor says. There’s no need to send a message this time, so there’s no need to clear it through the Gamemakers. Instead, a few minutes after the staff select the drop location, Victor sees a delicate silver parachute descending from the sky.

Mila sees it to. She steps out of their little shelter to recover it, pulling the packaging open. Inside is a tube of skin sealant, the fast-acting kind that will stop the bleeding by cauterizing. She retreats back under the crumbling ceiling where they’re sheltering and shows Yuri.

“You can’t tell me this is for me,” she says wryly. “Will I have to put it on you in your sleep again?”

“No,” Yuri says, cracking a small, tired smile.

Mila unwinds the bandage. Yuri is still bleeding, sluggishly, a slow well of crimson from his arm. Yuri hisses when she peels his shirt away from it, tearing the sleeve off entirely. 

“The tube says this is going to hurt. Don't make noise.” There’s an applicator that comes with the medication. When it makes contact with skin, it reacts chemically, searing the flesh. 

Yuri’s eyes are barely open, but he rolls them, even though Victor can see his other hand clenching slowly in the leg of his pants, bracing for it.

Mila carefully smooths the sealant onto Yuri's skin without touching it herself. Yuri shudders and digs his nails into his thigh, and stamps against the ground with the heel of his foot. He’s twisting in Mila's grasp, but he's silent, and she’s strong enough to hold him in place even with his squirming. The medication bubbles on his skin, leaving angry pink across the wound as it melts and fuses the flesh together.

Victor watches him endure because it's the only thing he can do, his fists clenched hard enough to dig his nails into his palms.

When the cut has finally sealed, Mila caps the medication and slips it back into her pack. “You need to get water. You’ve lost blood.”

“Turned it all off,” Yuri mumbles. “There is no water.”

“Mr. Nikiforov, the broadcast light just came on,” a staff member says.

“There’s only five left. They want them drawn together.” Victor doesn’t take his eyes off the screen.

“Tributes!” Claudius Templesmith’s voice booms out into the Arena. He’s been announcing for so long, Victor thinks the Gamemakers might synthesize his voice when he dies. Victor has always hated the sound of it. “Five of you remain, in dire need of something vital to your survival—the very source of life itself. Water, available for only three hours, at the main fountain of the Cornucopia. Consider your choice carefully, and may the odds be ever in your favor.”

The main broadcast is flashing between tributes again. Minami, bruises purple on his throat, claws his way to his feet using the side of a building. The girl from District Two looks up and down the alley before staggering into motion. Guang Hong pauses, his head tilted to listen for anyone moving near him, before continuing his progress with steely resolve in his eyes.

Mila tries to help Yuri up, and Yuri shoves her hand away.

“You should go,” he says, and the main broadcast stays on their feed. “I’m not much help to you like this.”

“I don’t want to leave you in case they bring the building down on your head,” Mila says. “Come on, we’re going.”

Yuri knocks her hand aside again, scowling stubbornly. He looks like a weak, angry kitten, and he doesn’t have the strength to shove her aside when she finally stops letting her knock him away and pulls him up to his feet by his good arm.

“Walk.”

“Mila,” Yuri doesn’t budge when she tries to pull him. “You should go. You’re in the best shape out of all of us, you can take them.”

“And then do what with you?” Mila asks, glaring at him. “Stop fighting me and let’s go.”

“You should win,” Yuri insists. “You should win.”

Mila stares at him with her mouth open, shock and fury written all over her face. She yanks at his arm, but he only stumbles a couple more steps before stopping.

“Win, and what? Live in Victor’s Village alone with my mother? Nikolai isn’t my family, they won’t let me—”

“You can still take care of him,” Yuri interrupts. “You’ll have Victor.”

“I won’t have you,” Mila says. “You’re my only family, Yura. What will you do if I leave you behind?”

Yuri lifts his eyes from the ground and doesn’t have to answer. It’s written all over his face.

“No,” Mila says, her voice rising with the force of it. “No, you won’t, you’ll come with me and you’ll survive. You and Nikolai will move into Victor’s Village together and he’ll retire and never have to work again. You’ll live a life.”

“ _You_ should be the one to—”

“I don’t want to send someone into the Games!” Mila’s fingers dig into Yuri’s arm to the point of bruising. “I don’t want to do what Victor does!”

“You think I do?” Yuri asks, struggling in her grip again. She’s merciless, holding him in place. “I don’t want that either!”

“Then we’ll both have sacrificed something, won’t we?” Mila pulls him forward another few steps. “I’ll die for you and you’ll live for me.”

“That’s not fair.” Yuri’s voice cracks. “It’s not fair that the two of you made up your minds to do this to me. I didn’t ask to— to carry your life.”

“We’re saving _your_ life,” Mila says. She lets go of his arm long enough to shove her hand in his direction. “Swear you’ll do it. I die for you, you live for me.”

“Mila—”

“Promise me!” Her blue eyes are blazing in a pale face. “I’m not leaving you!”

Yuri slowly reaches out to take her hand. He squeezes, the two of them gripping each other. He’s struggling not to cry, tears glittering on his lashes in the artificial moonlight.

“I promise,” he says, in a cracked voice.

“Now come on, and don’t start this again when we get there.” Mila pulls him in so she can sling his arm around her shoulder and help him walk.

They all move toward the Cornucopia under the cover of darkness. The main broadcast keeps rotating between the tributes: Minami’s slow, wheezing progress; District Two, stumbling and staggering over the stone; Guang Hong, stalking the streets with his spear in hand; Mila and Yuri, leaning heavily on each other as they go. Victor can feel fatigue eating at him, but he doesn’t dare leave the monitors. The end of this will come when the sun rises, one way or another.

Guang Hong makes the fountain first, but he doesn’t go for the water. Instead, he settles behind a low fence, his spear propped up beside him, watching the square in silent wait.

“He must be thirsty,” Georgi mutters. He’s pulled up a chair beside Victor, and even though he looks almost ready to pass out, he’s forcing himself to stay awake.

“He’s only thinking about one thing, right now,” Victor says. He remembers being in Guang Hong’s position, remembers what it felt like to survive on rage and revenge alone. He’s not thinking about the water. He’s thinking about the girl from District Two.

It becomes more evident when Mila and Yuri stagger out of an alley behind him. Mila presses Yuri against the wall and frees her javelin. Guang Hong turns, reaching for his spear.

Yuri grabs Mila’s arm. “Wait!”

Guang Hong hesitates, his dark eyes darting between the two of them. He doesn’t rise from his crouch, doesn’t move to attack, though he keeps his hand on his weapon.

“I’m not here for you,” he says, his voice a dry whisper in his throat.

Mila lowers her javelin so the tip points at the ground. Yuri relaxes the grip on her arm, and is about to say something else, when noise from the square catches their attention.

It’s the girl from District Two. Tension winds through Guang Hong’s frame, and he slowly moves his spear so he can heft it properly. He darts one last look back at them and jerks his head to the side, indicating they should go.

Mila doesn’t need to be told twice. She pulls Yuri through a nearby building, into another alley, then across a street. They circle around to one side of the Cornucopia, giving District Two and Guang Hong a wide berth. Yuri staggers into a wall and slides down it, not far from the entrance of the square.

“I’ll just sit,” he whispers. “Just for a minute. I’ll just sit.”

Mila watches the girl from District Two approach the fountain, slowly putting one foot in front of the other. Her knives are in her hands, the long blades catching the light.

Guang Hong bursts from his cover while her back is turned. She hears him move, turning to face him, and barely dodges his first thrust with the spear. Stumbling, she knocks it away from her. Guang Hong turns on the ball of his foot and darts back at her, a quick change of direction that draws a grunt from his chest. He’s fighting on the last of his reserves, his swings wild, but the girl isn’t doing much better. She stabs at him and nearly trips over her own feet, recovering in time to roll to the side and dodge the downward thrust of Guang Hong’s spear.

Mila and Yuri watch them in silence. Yuri seems to have gotten his wind back, trembling less, his breathing even.

“Not long now,” Mila whispers, as the girl from District Two falls again, striking her knee on the side of the fountain. She reels and slips as she tries to rise, going over the stone lip and into the water. Guang Hong has his spear poised for when she rises.

Something flashes out of the water, flying through the air. Guang Hong twists, but his enraged scream echoes across the square when the blow lands, one of the long knives sinking into his body.

He doesn’t fall. He charges the fountain and hurls his spear, screaming again when the movement pulls at the knife lodged in his side. There’s a choked gurgle from the water. Guang Hong vaults the side of the fountain and wades to where his spear haft is thrashing in the water, closing both hands around the wood and pulling.

He brings the girl from District Two up out of the water, clawing at the spear. The long blade has pierced her chest. Guang Hong, a dark stain spreading down his clothing too rapidly to be anything but a fatal wound, yanks the spear free and brings it down again. The water looks black in the moonlight. The cannon fires.

In the foreground, sudden motion.

A tiny figure hurtles toward them in the darkness, a streak of red heralding his arrival. Mila’s javelin flies from her hand, bouncing off the side of a building across the alley. Minami scoops up the javelin as he runs, the point aimed straight at Yuri. Mila struggles to yank another one from her bag. She gets it halfway out before Minami is _there_ , Yuri trying to scramble to his feet, his claws sliding out of his gauntlets. Victor sees the mortal terror in his face, the moment he knows that there’s no dodging the metal point of the javelin aimed at his heart.

Mila only gets the javelin halfway out of her bag. She moves anyway, holding the javelin like a staff again, knocking the blow _down_ and _away_.

It isn’t down and away enough. The sound she makes when the tip pierces her stomach isn’t a scream. It’s a gasp, like she’s surprised, then her face screws up in agony. The javelin falls from her hands, and she catches Minami’s shirt as she falls to her knees. He ran her through.

Yuri’s shriek of denial is raw and animal. He leaps, propelled by adrenaline and rage. His claws sink into Minami’s chest and he rips them up, the tips raking along the bones of his ribs. 

“You—!” Minami manages to choke out, before his breath turns into nothing but bubbling whistles. Yuri has punctured his lung.

Mila sinks down onto her side, curling around the javelin. She’s struggling to keep her eyes open. Victor is on his feet, hands clutching at the fabric of his shirt, wrinkling it in his grasp. He hears Yuri screaming in the background, the sound of metal rending flesh, but he can’t wrench his eyes away from her. Finally, she rolls over onto her back, her eyes sliding shut.

The cannon fires. Victor’s heart kicks in his chest, but Mila’s vitals are still beeping quietly. It’s Minami, Victor realizes, but Yuri doesn’t stop. He strikes again and again, wild blows that tear into Minami’s skin, mauling him. It isn’t until the cannon fires again that Yuri turns with a gasp, blood on his face, speckling his lips, his cheeks, his forehead.

“Mila.” His voice breaks. He rolls away from Minami’s still body and crawls to where Mila is still breathing, the javelin protruding from her abdomen, her hands curled around the weapon where it’s seated in her skin.

She coughs.

“Hey,” she says, smiling up at him like they’re having any other conversation. There’s blood staining her teeth. “Look at that. We’re the last two after all.”

Yuri is stammering denials that can barely be understood around his sobbing. He reaches to touch her and yanks his hand back when the claws move with him. He pulls at the buckles and strips the gauntlets off, hurling them away. They clatter onto the pavement near Minami’s still-bleeding corpse.

“You knew this is how it would go,” she says. “It’s how we planned it. We made a deal.”

“I don’t want this,” Yuri cries. He pulls her to him, her head in his lap, his hand going to hers where they’re curled around the javelin. She grunts when he moves her, her face twisted, but she doesn’t protest.

To Victor’s right, Georgi has both hands pressed over his mouth, his shoulders shaking. Victor reaches out and pulls him in close, and immediately has Georgi’s face buried in his chest. His makeup will smear all down the front of Victor’s shirt, but Victor clings to him just as hard, his throat so tight he can hardly breathe.

He thinks he’s the only person besides Mila who wanted this, and he doesn’t want it now.

“You promised me,” Mila reminds him. She fumbles for his hand. He takes it. “You promised me to live for me.”

“I promised, I know, I’ll do it.” Yuri doesn’t even notice when the hovercraft arrives to collect Minami’s body. “Mila, Mila, don’t.”

“I can’t stop it now,” she says. She tries to squeeze his hand, but Victor can tell even through the monitor there’s not strength in her fingers. “It’s funny, I didn’t think— it was going to hurt this much.”

Victor can’t even describe the sounds Yuri is making now, his hand shaking in Mila’s grasp.

“I did what I came to do. I got to choose. They didn’t—” she makes her first real sound of agony, a groan as her hands spasm, one in Yuri’s grip and one around the weapon in her middle. “They didn’t take it from me. I got to choose.”

It winds out of her like a long breath, like a sigh. He eyes don’t close, and Victor watches them go dull and lifeless.

Her chest doesn’t rise again.

Yuri screams, and it’s more like a wail, the howl of a wounded beast. It echoes off the buildings and down the alleys, louder than the distant boom of the cannon. When he runs out of breath he struggles for another and screams again, crowding close to Mila’s still form, his forehead pressed to hers.

“Ladies and Gentleman,” the voice of Claudius Templesmith is the only thing that can drown out Yuri’s raw grief. “The winner of the 77th Hunger Games, Yuri Plisetsky of District Ten!”

It’s different with every winner. Some, like JJ, cheer for themselves, ragged and victorious. Some, like Aiglentine of District Eleven, faint from exhaustion. Victor remembers both of his victories, swaying on his feet, numb to his core.

He’s never seen a victor fight the crew that comes to take him. Yuri struggles, kicking and biting, screaming obscenities and clawing at them, trying to reach Mila.

“Georgi, I have to go,” Victor says, forcing himself to relax the grip he has on Georgi’s shoulders and gently pry him away. “I have to go get him.”

“She did it,” Georgi sobs. “She did it.”

Victor turns him around and propels him toward a couple of staff members. They take charge of Georgi and steer him into a chair, patting him and making soothing noises. On the screen, the Arena staff have finally drugged Yuri, his body going limp in their hands. The public broadcast fades away into the Capitol seal, and is slowly replaced by the faces of Seneca Crane, Claudius Templesmith, and Phichit Chulanont, ready for the post-Games show.

The only person with dry eyes is Victor.

“Thank you all for your support,” he says, his voice steady. He feels like he’s watching from a distance, like he’s telling his body to move from a bird’s-eye view. He walks out of the media room without a backward look.

The other mentors are there as he leaves his media room. District Two’s team leaves without a backward glance, never deigning to talk to the lower districts. Cao Bin of District Six gives Victor a slow nod.

Minako and Celestino of Twelve are waiting for him to catch up.

“I’m sorry,” is the first thing Victor says. He never gets the chance to say it, but here he stands, having saved a tribute from the Arena. Successful now where he had failed two years ago.

“You kept him alive,” Minako says. “It’s what you’re supposed to do. Don’t apologize for that.”

Another day, another year, Victor might have protested that he was supposed to keep someone else alive in the Quarter Quell. That he shouldn’t even be standing here, that he should be dead. He’s tried to say those words to Celestino more times than he can count. Sometimes they stick in his throat. Sometimes Celestino cuts him off before he can get them out.

This time, he doesn’t feel like he should say them at all. If he had died in the Quell like he was supposed to, Yuri would be dead today.

The thought sobers him, piercing through the cloud of disconnection and turmoil that swirls through his chest like an oncoming storm. Yuri is alive, and Mila succeeded where he failed.

He doesn’t know what else to say to the two of them. The rest of the walk to the front doors of HQ passes in silence. When they walk through the doors, though, Victor sees that their kindness still isn’t over; they shield him from the cameras as he hustles into the waiting hovercar, in no shape to be seen in public. The door closes behind him, tinted windows blocking the camera flashes, and they take off, the city falling smoothly away behind them.

Victor takes a long, slow breath. He calmly reaches for the button to roll up the partition between himself and the pilot. There, in the backseat of the hovercar that will take him to Yuri, alone and without witnesses, Victor finally puts his head between his knees and cries until his throat is sore.

He sleeps, for the first time since the train from District Ten, without dreams. His face is mashed against the window when he wakes, a bright red mark on his cheek when he peels himself off the glass. They’re coming in for a landing. Out the window, Victor can see the shadowed bulk of the Arena. Right now, Arena staff will be walking the streets, removing the hazards that were set up to kill the tributes so it can be safely converted into a tourist attraction.

Yuri will be moved to the Capitol again shortly, but for now, the immediate stabilization happens in the field. There’s a surgical center set up near the Arena, and that’s where the hovercar lands. Victor tries to straighten himself up when he steps out of it, smoothing down his shirt, running a hand through his hair.

He needn’t have bothered. Christophe is waiting for him, a garment bag folded over his arm. “You look like a disaster,” he says, before kissing Victor on both cheeks.

Lilia, beside him, looks tired but satisfied. “They have him sedated. They started to give him a transfusion and he had a reaction, so they had to stop. It’ll set his recovery back.”

 _Good,_ Victor thinks, though he doesn’t say it out loud. Yuri will have only as much time as it takes for him to be on his feet again and able to speak coherently in front of a camera. Ostensibly, Victor is to be the judge of when Yuri is ready to make his next public appearance. In reality, he’ll be closely monitored for any sign of trying to push the big interview back.

He wants to. Yuri deserves time, and if Victor could, he’d give Yuri all the time in the world, but defying the Capitol so directly is one thing he can’t do. It would only get them both killed, and what a waste that would be. Or, worse, it would just get Yuri killed, leaving Victor alone again. The Capitol is fond of doing that to him.

“Is there somewhere I can change?” Victor asks. “No cameras here, I know, but I’m not sure how much time we’ll have when they transfer us back to the Capitol.”

“There’s a little ensuite in Yuri’s room,” Chris says. He takes in Victor’s face, his eyes red and puffy from crying, and produces a handkerchief out of nowhere, dabbing at Victor’s face. “It’s a good thing you weren’t wearing any makeup, darling. You’re a mess.”

“I know,” Victor says. He doesn’t ask how Chris isn’t just as much of a mess. They have, under mutual agreement, never discussed the emotional fallout of the Games beyond what Victor needs to keep his equilibrium. Victor likes Chris too much to be able to stomach the level of distance he maintains from the tributes, as if they’re pretty dolls for him to dress, to shed a few tears over when they shatter, but nothing more.

He lets the two of them lead him into the center. It’s little more than one patient room and the bare bones of support facilities around it; there’s never more than one survivor, after all. Victor accepts the garment bag from Chris, hoping it’s one of the suits he likes and not one of the ones Chris keeps convincing him to buy, and lets himself into Yuri’s room.

Yuri is pale and still in the center of the hospital bed. He looks fragile, his skin stretched over his bones. He’s been cleaned of the sweat, dirt, and blood that covered him in the Arena, his golden hair fanned out across the pillow. Monitors by his bedside beep steadily with the same vital signs Victor has been watching for days. 

He sets down the garment bag and picks up Yuri’s chart, his eyes flicking over the bloodwork. Someone has thoughtfully translated the medical staff’s jargon into things he can understand. Yuri is dehydrated. His blood pressure and his heart rate are depressed, because he’s lost a great deal of blood volume. The protein bars he’s been packing away during the Games have left him with a nutrition imbalance.

Some of Yuri’s hair is stuck to his mouth, thankfully free of any breathing tubes. His lungs are still strong. Victor reaches out without thinking, gently brushing it away, smoothing Yuri’s hair out of his face with his fingertips. Yuri’s eyebrows are pinched together. Victor touches that tiny wrinkle with his thumb, wanting to smooth it away. Yuri has endured so much. If Victor had his way, Yuri would suffer nothing further, not even dreams.

He pulls away at the sudden roar of anger that rolls through his gut. He’ll have to push Yuri back to his feet, and he’ll have to do it fast. There is no respite for them. The Capitol is made up of voyeurs through and through, and they’ll want to see Yuri’s broken heart put on display just as much as they wanted to see what broke it.

The protectiveness he feels staggers him. He wonders if any of the other mentors have felt this way. If Yakov felt this way, when Victor emerged from his first Games hollow-eyed and numb. Victor retreats into the bathroom to change and compose himself, trying to breathe steadily. He doesn’t know if this fury is something he can tame, control, and wrest inside him the way he does with everything else. It makes him want to hurt, to kill and destroy and lay waste to anything that might threaten Yuri now.

He stares into his own fevered eyes in the mirror. Nothing remains of the perfectly polished Living Legend, Victor Nikiforov. He looks weary; not nearly as weary as Yuri, but still worn down and stretched out. He rubs his hands over his face and begins unbuttoning his shirt.

Chris and Lilia leave him alone. They've learned he can be volatile after the Games end, and this is uncharted territory altogether for Chris. He's never been a stylist on a winning team. Usually, he would be back in his own apartment, watching the post-Games breakdown and dreaming up his next fashion line while Victor returned to District Ten. Instead, he’ll collaborate with Lilia on Yuri’s look for his first on-camera appearance after his recovery.

It will be several more weeks before they're allowed to go to District Ten now. Yuri has the Victory Tour, all the interviews, pomp, and circumstance that goes with it, and the endless receptions on the side as they travel. First, though, before any of that, Yuri will have his interview. That’s why Victor is here. He has to see to Yuri’s recovery, which is polite Capitol doublespeak for making sure he's defanged and functional enough that he won't go for anyone’s throat.

Victor thinks that, even with how it went with Minami, _he's_ more likely to snap in that way than Yuri is. He's spent more years as a killer, and he's had to do it twice. But the Capitol isn’t afraid of him anymore, if they ever were. He showed them all where his weakness is in the Games. It's the biggest mistake he's made since believing he could make the Quell go the way he wanted. The radiation made him panic, as it was supposed to, and tip his hand. Everyone knows now that to press Victor into anything, Yuri need only be threatened.

Victor remembers what it was like to have a weakness. They'll exploit it whenever they can, use Yuri against him just like they'll use Victor against Yuri if they think it'll net them an advantage. And Yuri, Victor doesn’t know what kind of state Yuri will be in when he wakes.

He doesn't get to find out that day, as the surgeons whisk Yuri out of his room and into the OR for reconstruction of the ugly wound on the back of his arm. They'll remove the scarring and repair the damaged muscle, leaving Yuri with no lasting sign of the wound that could have killed him. Victor remembers when he woke up from his first Games with his body buffed free of scars, how much he'd hated that they’d touched him like that when he slept. They’d even taken away scars from his childhood, leaving him flawless and alien. He's willing to bet Yuri will feel the same way.

They move back to the Capitol while Yuri recovers from surgery. Victor feels extraneous, like maybe he should have just stayed there in the first place, but he's glad they brought him when Yuri wakes on the hovercraft.

Yuri sits up and yanks at the lines in his arm. The needles pull free before Victor can grab his hand. The furious sound he makes is raw in his throat, and he fights against Victor’s grip until the fog of sleep clears from his mind and he sees who has him.

He shoves Victor’s hands away.

“Don’t pull anything else off,” Victor says, shifting back over on the seat. He doesn't have much room to move; the hovercar is little more than a flying ambulance.

“Where am I?” Yuri croaks. The medic, riding with them, passes Victor a cup with a straw. Victor holds it out for Yuri to sip, pulling it back when Yuri starts to lift his hands.

“You lost a lot of blood, and you had a reaction to the transfusion. Let me hold it.”

“Like hell,” Yuri says, and snatches at it with the hand that's still bleeding from the lines he pulled out. Victor, despite the medic’s dirty look, lets him have it so he doesn't hurt himself further.

“We’re on our way back to the Tower,” Victor says. “The medical facilities there will finish treating you until you recover.”

Yuri’s eyes dart warily to the medic. It's the first time he's had contact with Capitol people outside his prep team and Georgi, and Victor can tell he's not sure what to do with the woman who has her cotton candy pink hair in a no-nonsense ponytail.

“Where did they take her?” Yuri demands next, fingers digging into the sheets of the gurney. “They could have—”

“No,” Victor says, trying to be as gentle as he possibly can. “No, Yuri, they couldn't have.”

Yuri’s face screws up. Victor grabs for the cup of water as he drops it, shoving it at the medic. Yuri presses the heels of his hands against his eyes and his shoulders shudder. He tries to swallow back the sob that shakes out of his chest and coughs.

“Mr. Plisetsky—”

“Get away from me!” Yuri snarls at the medic, who goes pale and sits back down in the seat.

“It's best if you go up front,” Victor murmurs to her, watching Yuri choke it all back. She leaves, the little door between their compartment and the pilot seat swinging closed after her.

“It's just us,” Victor says, and Yuri breaks down.

When he came out of his first Games, Victor jumped away from every touch like it was an attack. When he came out of the Quell, he was so achingly alone that he wanted touch from whoever would give it. He takes the chance.

He tugs at Yuri’s shoulder first, turning him a little. Yuri throws his hand off, then leans toward it. Victor tries again, scooting closer to the gurney and pulling Yuri until he tips, lands with his face on Victor's shoulder. 

“Yuri, I'm sorry,” he says, as he holds Yuri close and lets him scream his anger and anguish and grief into Victor’s shirt. Yuri is inconsolable, crying until he can’t catch his breath. Victor never cried like this. He walked out of the Arena numb, like something of himself had died inside it. Yuri _feels_ it, every raw nerve of it. Victor soothes him until the crying slows into even breathing. He lays Yuri down on the gurney and goes to tap at the door to the front compartment.

“He's asleep again,” he tells the wary medic, and she comes to reset Yuri’s needles and tubes.

Victor thinks of strategy. Yuri will need time, more time than he thinks he has. If he's lucky, Yuri will be anemic for a little while longer, and they'll need to keep him in facilities. Victor is fairly sure they’ve run out of luck, though, so he plans for the worst. Yuri has a future to think about, now, and keeping the Capitol’s attention will be difficult when he isn’t the one they were rooting for.

He might win them over if they see this, but Victor’s heart rebels at the idea of parading Yuri’s grief before that audience. He can’t, even if it is the best play. Yuri has been through enough.

He’ll have to be grateful, Victor decides. Grateful to Mila, especially, since she was the one they wanted to win. He should be open about his resentment toward Victor; there’s enough resentment toward him out there right now that having Yuri on that side of the argument will work in his favor.

The press swarms the hovercar as they land in front of the tower. Victor gives them nothing, ignoring the questions they’re screaming at him, like if they only yell louder he’ll be sure to give them a sound byte to tear apart. He keeps his sunglasses on and doesn’t smile. He realizes only after they disappear behind the doors of the Tower that he has Yuri’s hand in his.

The recovery ward of the Tower is just as sterile as the tiny surgery just outside the Arena, but it’s more permanent. The bed they transfer Yuri to is vastly more comfortable than the gurney. They put a chest strap over him, restraining him to the bed. Everything is white and brushed steel, gleaming in the soft yellow glow from the ceiling.

They leave Yuri and Victor alone once they have him settled, retreating again. Capitol people like to pretend they aren’t afraid of the victors that come out of the Arena, but Victor knows they are.

He’s dozing in a chair next beside Yuri when Yuri wakes again. There are no more tubes or monitors hooked up to his body. The doctors informed Victor that the only thing left for his recovery is to drink fluids and build up his iron levels.

It means they don’t have much time.

“Yuri,” he says, when Yuri tries to sit up. The chest belt catches him and knocks him back into bed, and Victor sees him start to panic. “Yuri, it’s just a restraint.”

Yuri’s bright green eyes spear him to the chair. Victor remembers his first impression of those eyes, the cold fury that burned at the back of them. It’s there tenfold, now.

“Why are you here?” he asks, his voice harsh.

Victor considers the control panel on the side of the bed until he finds how to tilt it up, raising the head so Yuri can drink. He hands him water from the nightstand. 

“They’re afraid you might kill someone if they send in the staff,” he says honestly. “Usually they make the mentors wait until the recovery is finished. With you… I think they’re wondering if the way you snapped in the Arena is going to persist.”

Yuri’s hands close around the glass slowly as he processes that answer.

“I won’t,” he says.

“I know,” Victor says. “They don’t, though. They were scared of me, too, when I came out. They’re scared of everyone who wins. It’s why they control us as much as they do.”

Yuri’s lips twist into a sneer. “They make us into what we are and then they think they can just put a leash on us.”

“They can.” Victor leans forward, his hands laced together between his knees. “You still have a family to be leveraged against you, Yuri. Don’t make the mistake of thinking they’re silly and weak. The average people, sure—there are more Georgis than not—but there’s a reason this system has endured. The people at the top? They’re ruthless, and they’re smart about it.”

Yuri looks away from him, his throat bobbing as he swallows. His hands are clenched into fists. He stares up at the soft yellow glow from the ceiling, blinking rapidly. His breakdown in the hovercar seems to have drained everything out of him. His eyes aren’t even damp.

“You told me they couldn’t do anything for Mila,” Yuri says.

“Yuri,” Victor says, softly.

“If they can do this to me, why couldn’t they save her?” Yuri gestures down at his body, at how flawless his skin is, at how his nails have been buffed and shined. He was half-dead when they brought him in, and now he looks ready to take on the world. These Games didn’t stretch on long enough for true malnutrition and muscle wasting to set in. Yuri’s cheeks are still round and full, his skin practically radiating a healthy glow.

“There’s only ever one winner.” Victor wishes, not for the first time, that he could go back to the numb, cold feeling he wrapped himself in on the train, before these two wormed their way into his heart and made him care about them.

“She should have been watching out for herself!” The outburst is wild, Yuri's chest heaving like he can’t breathe. He tries to sit up out of bed, is caught by the chest strap and thrown back against the sheets. He makes a furious sound and tries to rip it loose, but it won’t budge. “She had a real chance! She was stronger than me, and older, and she didn’t _hesitate_.” He spits the last word, and Victor knows he’s thinking of Minami, of the way Yuri’s mercy proved to be Mila’s death knell. “What was she doing saving me? It was _stupid!_ ”

He’s breathing hard by the end of his little rant, his eyes burning in his face. His hands clutch the restraining band around his chest, the muscles in his arms bunched as he tries to rip it away. Victor suspects they’ll release him soon, once they’re sure he isn’t going to try to kill anyone outside of the Arena, but he knows how trapped it makes Yuri feel. All of it must make him feel trapped; the bed, the room, the Capitol, the looming prospect of having to smile again for the camera and talk about what happened to him in there. 

Victor is going to give Yuri as much time as he can. As much strength as he can. This, this thing inside his memory he's been shying away from, Yuri needs it as much as he does. And as painful as it is to dredge it up from the depths of his soul where he’s pushed it away, he thinks he deserves to hurt a little, for Yuri’s sake.

“Do you remember a District Twelve tribute named Yuuri Katsuki?” he asks, and watches Yuri’s eyebrows snap into a scowl.

“No,” he snarls. “Should I?”

“No, I guess not. They wouldn't want us remembering the ones that die.” Victor sees Yuri’s fists curl, at that. “He was in the Quarter Quell with me.”

“Oh,” Yuri says softly. The rage has taken that confused, listless edge again, like it's building up inside him and stays roiling under his skin with nowhere to go.

“He should never have been in his first Games. Yuuri was kind. Too kind for the Arena. He won by surviving, by hiding and outwitting. The Gamemakers tried to kill him, but he was lucky and smart. I.” Victor breathes. He's having trouble doing it. Talking about Yuuri chokes him. It always will, he thinks, no matter how many times. “I loved him.”

“You were both mentors,” Yuri realizes aloud.

“For a few years, yes. We only got to see each other during the Games and during receptions. We were in love, and we were careless enough to let the Capitol see it.”

“But,” Yuri says, frowning in confusion. “That Leroy asshole from District One proposed to his mentor in his post-Games interview. They broadcast it everywhere.”

“They’re both from the same district,” Victor says. The words taste bitter on his tongue. “So that’s alright, isn’t it? But the two of us, one from Ten and one from Twelve, well. That’s too much cooperation between Districts. That kind of thing makes the powerful take notice.”

Victor falls silent. Yuuri loved to dance, but hated being the center of attention. It was always Victor who had coaxed him out onto the floor, convincing Yuuri to lead, to sweep him off his feet and whirl them across the banquet halls and pavilions. They’d thought they were safe. Yuuri had family, but he never made waves; Victor was the one they targeted, always, because Victor liked to laugh in the face of convention and have loud opinions on camera.

Then the Quell came, and the announcement that the tributes would be reaped from the victors. Victor remembers cradling Yuuri’s face in his hands, telling him it would all be okay, that the odds of them both being chosen were so slim, that whichever one of them went in would have to be sure to win it.

That they were both selected, instead of Yakov or Celestino, was the Capitol’s doing, Victor is sure of it.

“What happened to him?” Yuri asks. There’s less anger in his voice, now. The question almost sounds soft. Victor has never heard Yuri talk to him that way.

“He saved my life in the Arena, and he died for it,” Victor says. He has to force it out. “It wasn’t— I was supposed to die. He was supposed to win. I was supposed to protect him.”

This memory is the worst of them all. Victor can smell the stink of blood in his nose, can feel Yuuri’s skin sticky with it under his hands. He remembers only glancing down at the horrible wound across Yuuri’s chest, the way he was flayed open by the blow of the sword. He remembers the cool touch of Yuuri’s fingers on his face, the white of Yuuri’s teeth as he smiled. He was the one who told Victor, then, that it would be alright. Victor remembers those words, because they were his last. _It’ll be alright, Victor_. 

After that, he can’t go on. It doesn't seem like he has to. Yuri’s palms are bloody from the bite of his nails. He's speechless. The silence descends around them like the very air is pressing in on their ears.

Finally, one of them finds their words.

“Will it always feel like this?” Yuri asks. “I can't think straight. I keep drea— I keep remembering. Does it stop?”

 _Will I stop seeing her face in my dreams?_ Victor reads, in the desperate roundness of his eyes. _Will I sleep without smelling blood?_

“It slows down,” Victor says. They both have this to weather, now, and it's time for only truth between them. Yuri deserves that.

“How long do I have before someone tries to shove a camera in my face?” Yuri asks, his voice cracking. “When will they let us go home?”

“You have an interview with Phichit as soon as you can stand and walk without assistance,” Victor says. “Then we have the Victory Tour. Chris and Lilia are working on your interview look now.”

“No claws,” Yuri says. He looks away from Victor, but not before Victor catches a glimpse of a real plea in his eyes. “Please, tell them. I don’t want them.”

“I will,” Victor promises. “Do you want me to put the bed back down?”

Yuri hands him the empty glass with a mute nod, and Victor lowers the bed. He’s about to shift back when Yuri reaches out and grabs his sleeve.

“I don’t want to be alone,” he says, gripping Victor’s suit jacket hard enough to wrinkle.

“I’m not going anywhere, Yuri,” Victor says. He pries Yuri’s fingers loose, but takes Yuri’s hand instead, his palm warm and dry in Victor’s.

“Yura,” he says, faintly as he’s falling asleep. “She used to call me Yura.”

“Yura,” Victor repeats. “Sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Yuri’s eyes close. Victor watches his face smooth into sleep and then tighten from the dreams, and keeps Yuri’s hand in his the whole time. He made a promise, after all, to take care of him. He’s glad that Yuri is going to let him.

They get two more days. The doctors test Yuri’s muscle tone, mix supplements into his food, and force him to drink glass after glass of water. The color returns to his skin quickly. They don’t speak to each other much. Yuri is in and out of sleep, since there isn’t much else to do while his body recovers. They won’t let him have any access to the outside world. The hours pass slowly, and even though they don’t speak, Victor knows they’re both grieving. It’s enough to be with someone else for that.

They try to make him leave when they bring in Yuri’s clothes, a clean, new version of the outfit he wore for the Games. It’s what he’ll meet his prep team in, before they strip him out of it in favor of whatever outfit has been developed for his interview. Victor refuses to leave, and in the end they give up.

Yuri touches the clothes like there’s poison on the fabric. Victor turns his back so that Yuri can dress in privacy, which is more than the prep team will grant him. Yuri touches his arm when he’s done, and Victor thinks it’s gratitude. They walk out of the sterile room together.

“Yuri!” Georgi shrieks as soon as they’re within sight. He runs toward them, and Victor’s hand falls to the small of Yuri’s back without thinking. He’s strung tight with tension and jumps a little at the touch, but he doesn’t lash out when Georgi throws his arms around Yuri’s neck and clings to him, sobbing. “I was so worried! They would let Victor in to see you but they kept saying I wasn’t allowed!”

“I’m fine,” Yuri says, shoving at Georgi’s chest. Georgi pulls away enough to hold him by the shoulders, looking him over.

“Well, at least you don’t look awful,” he says. “You should have seen Victor by the end of the Games. His hair!”

“I had more important things to worry about.” Victor shouldn’t feel angry with Georgi for his usual utter lack of awareness, but it does make him angry. How could he have been thinking about the way he looked when Mila was fighting for Yuri’s life?

“You did,” Georgi says, and some of Victor’s anger drains away. It’s a minor miracle for Georgi to admit that appearances aren’t everything, so Victor will take it. “Oh, Yuri, I have to go, I have a banquet to organize. I just wanted to see for myself that they’d gotten you back into tip-top shape! You’re representing District Ten, after all!”

He sweeps Yuri into another hard hug and bustles off in a whirl of purple gauze. Victor swallows down the cold feeling that’s forming in his chest. One step at a time. He’ll have to think later about what it means that Gaius, as Yuri’s biggest sponsor, will be seated close enough to Yuri to touch.

Victor wonders if he could get away with snapping Gaius’s neck. Maybe if he’s discreet.

“Victor?”

Yuri is looking up at him. Victor shakes himself out of his thoughts and forces a smile.

“Yes?”

“Don’t do that,” Yuri says immediately. “You don’t have to do it with me.”

Victor’s smile falters, then fades entirely. Yuri’s eyes are solemn as he watches the mask slide away from Victor’s face. He can’t remember the last time he did this in front of other people. Lilia and Chris, waiting patiently to take charge of Yuri to dress him for the interview, watch in silence.

“Yeah, that’s better,” Yuri says. “Will you be there backstage?”

“They couldn’t keep me away,” Victor says, and Yuri’s lips curve into the ghost of a smile. He remembers Victor yelling at the doctors when they tried to make him leave.

“Okay,” he says, and leaves with his stylists.

Victor is escorted to the green room—little more than a trailer beside the stage. He wonders what other mentors do to fill this time, but he can’t bring himself to turn on any of the screens on the wall of the trailer. He should probably take the tenor of public opinion. He should find out if they hate Yuri as much as they probably hate him, for pushing Mila as his choice while knowing all along that Yuri was the one he was favoring to win. The Capitol hates being tricked, and everyone from the sponsors to the average viewer probably feels tricked.

He doesn’t care. He’ll enjoy being the Capitol’s villain instead of its darling, shunted off into obscurity while someone else becomes the focus of their spotlight. He hopes it’s JJ Leroy, because he and the Capitol quite frankly deserve each other.

The Avox who comes to bring him his lunch is Otabek again, his dark eyes solemn. When he pours Victor’s water, he lingers, with the pitcher in his hands like he’s waiting for something. Victor can’t speak to him directly but thinking out loud can’t hurt.

“I wish they would have sent me something a little stronger,” he sighs, sipping the water. “That Yuri is still going to be a handful.”

Gratitude flickers on the silent Otabek’s face, and then he’s gone.

It isn’t long before they come to bring Victor backstage.

Since the Quarter Quell, there has always been an air of eager anticipation whenever Victor arrived in a room. The Capitol fawned over him, from the rich and powerful all the way down to the backstage staff. That’s gone, now; the stagehand leading him to where Yuri stands fidgeting entirely ignores his existence, leaving without a backward glance.

Yuri sees him in the gloom underneath the stage. They’ve installed a lift to take him up into the bright lights. Yuri shifts his weight from one foot to the other like he wants to run. The metal platform reminds Victor too much of the ones that take them to the surface in the Arena, and he’s sure Yuri is thinking the same thing.

He isn’t wearing claws, or cat-slit contacts, or fangs. The animal is gone, and what remains is just a boy. The clothes they’ve put him in are so simple by Capitol standards they’re downright plain. The slacks are a light cream, and the shimmering, pale golden shirt loose around the neck and in the sleeves. The neckline dips below Yuri’s collarbones. It makes him look smaller, more slender, like a harmless boy instead of a vicious killer.

“It’s good,” Victor says. “They did a good job.”

“At least it’s something normal,” Yuri grumbles, tugging at the cuffs of the shirt. Little pearl buttons glitter on his wrists.

“They’re going to love you.” Victor offers a hand, and Yuri takes it warily, stumbling when Victor pulls. He wraps Yuri up in his arms, holding him there when Yuri stiffens. “Yura, listen.”

Yuri goes still immediately at that name and the low urgency in Victor’s voice.

“What we did isn’t popular with the Capitol. I tricked them into thinking they’d get Mila and they got you instead.” Yuri’s hands curl into fists against Victor’s chest, but he doesn’t try to pull away. “It’s important that you separate yourself from me. You’re grateful, you’re humble, and you had no idea what we were doing. Remember that.”

Yuri does yank away from him then, disgust warring with anger on his face. Victor’s heart pounds in his chest. If he can’t do this, then things are about to get much, much worse for the two of them.

As he watches, though, Yuri takes a long breath. He smooths his expression out, the scowl lifting from his brows, his frown stretching into a bright smile.

“How’s this?” he asks, and Victor’s chest aches.

“It’s perfect,” he says, stepping back from the platform. “You’re going to do great.”

Yuri nods. They hear the muffled sounds of Phichit’s voice, the roar of the crowd, and the squeak and groan of gears. The platform starts to rise. Victor holds onto Yuri’s hand as long as he can, until the tips of their fingers skim each other and Yuri rises out of his reach, ascending to the stage above, and to Panem, who awaits its victor.

Victor will be here, waiting for the Yuri underneath the mask to return.

**Author's Note:**

> There is an eventual sequel planned that will be explicitly Victor Nikiforov/Yuri Plisetsky. If this is a ship you dislike, you can stop at the end of the first fic and read it as gen. However, if you thought the end bits were shippy... yeah, they are.


End file.
